Future Idea Submission Intentions (FISI)

1. Abstract

The Future Idea Submission Intentions (FISI) scale, originally operationalized as “future idea sharing” by Fombelle, Bone, and Lemon (2016), is a specialized tri-item psychometric instrument designed to assess a consumer’s subjective probability and declarative intent to submit creative suggestions, collaborative feedback, and novel concepts to an organization in the future. Developed within the context of open innovation, customer co-creation, and crowdsourcing management, the scale addresses a pivotal challenge in modern service marketing: how organizational rejection of unsolicited or solicited consumer suggestions influences downstream voluntary engagement. The instrument employs a mixed-response format featuring one agreement-anchored Likert item and two subjective probability- or likelihood-anchored items, capturing both attitudinal determination and behavioral expectancy. Psychometric evaluations across multiple experimental and field-like studies demonstrate that the FISI operates as a strictly unidimensional construct with high internal consistency (Cronbach’s α typically ranging between .88 and .95). It possesses robust convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related predictive validity, successfully differentiating consumers subjected to face-threatening rejection communications from those exposed to face-enhancing, appreciative feedback mechanisms. This article provides an exhaustive psychometric review of the scale, detailing its theoretical foundations in politeness theory, customer engagement theory, and the theory of planned behavior, alongside structural characteristics, reliability estimates, factor analytic findings, and administration protocols for behavioral researchers and organizational strategists.

2. Keywords

Future Idea Submission Intentions, Customer Co-Creation, Open Innovation, Customer Engagement, Idea Sharing, Face-Enhancing Strategies, Service Marketing, Consumer Behavior, Psychometrics, Voluntary Feedback

3. Authors

The Future Idea Submission Intentions (FISI) measure was developed and validated by an interdisciplinary team of leading marketing and service management scholars:

• Paul W. Fombelle, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Marketing, D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Dr. Fombelle specializes in customer experience management, customer feedback systems, service innovation, and consumer relationship dynamics.
• Sterling A. Bone, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing, Jon M. Huntsman School of Business, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, USA. Dr. Bone’s research focuses on service interactions, customer voice mechanisms, organizational transparency, and public policy issues within commercial exchanges.
• Katherine N. Lemon, Ph.D. — Accenture Professor of Marketing, Carroll School of Management, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. Dr. Lemon is an internationally recognized authority on customer equity, customer journey mapping, service design, and customer experience measurement.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Future Idea Submission Intentions (FISI) scale is to measure, diagnose, and predict a customer’s forward-looking willingness to participate in firm-sponsored ideation platforms, collaborative innovation hubs, and organizational feedback initiatives. In modern service ecosystems, organizations increasingly solicit ideas from external stakeholders through open innovation contests and digital submission portals (such as Starbucks Idea, Dell IdeaStorm, or MyStarbucksIdea). However, empirical industry data indicate that approximately 98% of submitted customer concepts are ultimately rejected due to technical feasibility, cost constraints, strategic misalignments, or regulatory hurdles. The communicative act of rejecting a customer’s personal contribution represents a major relational hazard, frequently causing cognitive dissonance, ego deflation, alienation, and abrupt cessation of future collaborative behaviors.

The FISI was specifically engineered to capture the downstream behavioral intentions of consumers who encounter negative organizational outcomes (i.e., idea rejection). Rather than assessing generalized consumer satisfaction or routine repurchase intentions, the scale isolates the delicate, voluntary communicative act of “voice” and proactive value co-creation. It serves as a vital dependent measure in experimental and field-based service research to determine how organizations can cushion the blow of rejection. Specifically, it enables researchers to evaluate whether communication strategies that incorporate politeness, public appreciation, face enhancement, and developmental feedback can successfully mitigate negative psychological reactions and preserve the customer’s desire to remain an active co-creator.

Beyond academic research in marketing and behavioral economics, the FISI has critical organizational applications for innovation managers, user experience (UX) researchers, and corporate relationship managers. By deploying the FISI, firms can quantitatively benchmark their automated or personalized rejection messaging protocols, screen ideation platform interfaces, assess the psychological threshold at which rejection induces behavioral withdrawal, and optimize customer relationship management (CRM) workflows to sustain continuous user-led innovation.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct underlying the FISI is conceptualized as a focused, forward-oriented behavioral intention reflecting a consumer’s subjective determination and probabilistic likelihood of submitting recommendations, innovative ideas, and actionable feedback to a specific target enterprise. The construct belongs to the broader taxonomy of customer proactive behavior and customer engagement value, specifically aligning with customer voice and voluntary helping behaviors.

Declarative Behavioral Intent vs. Subjective Probability

Unlike simplistic single-item behavioral intention metrics, the construct measured by the FISI integrates two complementary psychological modalities:

• Declarative Attitudinal Intent: The respondent’s explicit psychological commitment and internalized motivation toward idea sharing. This modality reflects a cognitive decision rule wherein the individual affirms an enduring willingness to invest cognitive effort and creative capital into the firm (e.g., agreeing that they intend to contribute again).
• Subjective Subject-to-Context Probability: The calibrated, probabilistic assessment that the respondent will actively execute the behavior within future temporal horizons (e.g., evaluating the subjective likelihood and probability of actual submission). This captures perceived self-efficacy, anticipated organizational responsiveness, and the behavioral outcome expectancy of the consumer.

Relational Vulnerability and Psychological Face

Idea submission is inherently a psychologically vulnerable behavior. When a customer conceives and submits an idea, they externalize their self-concept, creativity, and intellectual capital to an organization. In social psychology, offering a novel proposal exposes the individual to social evaluation; a cold or dismissive rejection damages the consumer’s positive face (the desire to be respected, validated, and seen as competent) and negative face (the desire to remain unimpeded and have one’s effort respected). Consequently, Future Idea Submission Intentions do not merely reflect functional utility; they represent a high-order manifestation of psychological resilience, restored self-esteem, and perceived organizational fairness following an evaluative event.

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the FISI scale is anchored in three foundational theoretical traditions across social psychology, communication science, and marketing theory:

1. Politeness Theory and Face-Work

Rooted in the seminal sociological and sociolinguistic framework of Brown and Levinson (1987), along with Erving Goffman’s (1967) sociology of interaction ritual, politeness theory posits that individuals possess an inherent concern for “face”—the public self-image that every member of society claims for themselves. A face-threatening act (FTA), such as turning down a customer’s creative concept, intrinsically challenges the individual’s positive face by signaling that their idea lacks value, distinctiveness, or operational viability. Fombelle, Bone, and Lemon (2016) demonstrated that when organizations deploy face-enhancing strategies—such as expressing profound gratitude, publicly acknowledging customer ingenuity, and validating effort—the threat to positive face is neutralized. Under these restorative conditions, future idea submission intentions remain elevated, whereas face-threatening (blunt, impersonal, or dismissive) rejections induce social embarrassment, cognitive defensiveness, and an immediate suppression of submission intentions.

2. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)

According to Ajzen’s (1991) Theory of Planned Behavior, behavioral intentions represent the most proximate and reliable cognitive antecedents of overt human behavior. Intentions encompass the motivational factors that determine how much conscious effort individuals are willing to exert to achieve a specific behavioral goal. The FISI operationalizes this premise by directly evaluating the intentional nexus between cognitive appraisal (appraisal of how the firm treated the consumer during prior interactions) and prospective execution. The inclusion of likelihood anchors alongside declarative agreement accounts for the consumer’s perceived behavioral control, ensuring that the intentional metric accounts for potential friction or reluctance.

3. Organizational Justice and Social Exchange Theory

Under Social Exchange Theory (Blau, 1964) and interactional justice frameworks (Bies & Moag, 1986), commercial relationships are mediated by perceived reciprocity and social dignity. Idea submission is an extra-role behavior characterized by non-contractual, voluntary effort. When customers perceive interactional justice—manifested as respectful, transparent, and empathetic communication regarding the status of their suggestion—they perceive the psychological contract as intact. The FISI quantifies this lingering goodwill, capturing the customer’s willingness to sustain continuous intellectual exchange despite an adverse initial outcome.

7. Validity

Empirical evidence supporting the construct, predictive, convergent, and discriminant validity of the FISI scale has been established across four multi-method studies conducted by Fombelle et al. (2016), involving both laboratory simulations and real-world consumer samples.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Across the four empirical investigations, confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) verified that the three items loaded robustly onto a single latent factor representing future idea sharing. Item-to-construct factor loadings systematically exceeded the recommended .70 cutoff (ranging from .84 to .96, p < .001), indicating that the combination of declarative and probabilistic anchors does not fragment the underlying unidimensional construct.

Predictive and Criterion-Related Validity

The scale demonstrates exceptional sensitivity to experimental manipulations of rejection communication styles. In Study 1 and Study 2 of Fombelle et al. (2016), consumers receiving face-enhancing rejection letters exhibited significantly higher future idea submission intentions compared to those receiving standard, neutral, or dismissive rejections (e.g., F-values demonstrating large effect sizes, p < .001). Furthermore, in extended longitudinal settings (Study 4), FISI scores strongly predicted actual subsequent behavioral engagement—such as voluntary visits to the firm’s open innovation web portals and willingness to fill out detailed supplemental suggestion forms—confirming robust criterion-related validity.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

Convergent validity was substantiated by Average Variance Extracted (AVE) estimates consistently surpassing the .50 benchmark (typically AVE > .78). Discriminant validity was established through the Fornell-Larcker criterion and structural equation modeling comparisons. Specifically, the FISI proved psychometrically distinct from related relational and transactional constructs, including:

• Overall Firm Satisfaction: Customers often maintained stable transactional satisfaction with core products while exhibiting highly volatile future idea sharing intentions depending directly on the communicative framing of the rejection.
• Repurchase Intentions: Willingness to buy products remained relatively resilient, whereas willingness to submit creative ideas degraded rapidly under dismissive rejection, demonstrating clear discriminant divergence.
• Brand Advocacy and Net Promoter Scores (NPS): While generalized advocacy reflects public endorsement, the FISI isolates voluntary co-productive effort, exhibiting unique structural variance.

8. Reliability

The FISI scale displays consistently high internal consistency reliability across varied sample populations, product categories (e.g., retail food, consumer technology, recreational goods), and research settings.

Internal Consistency Metrics

• Cronbach’s Alpha (α): Across the empirical studies reported in the primary validation literature (Fombelle et al., 2016), Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the three-item instrument consistently fell between .88 and .95. Specifically, Study 1 yielded an α of .91; Study 2 reported an α of .93; Study 3 yielded an α of .89; and Study 4 reported an α of .94. These values reflect exemplary reliability well above the standard psychometric threshold of .70 or .80.
• Composite Reliability (CR): Structural equation models indicate composite reliability values consistently exceeding .90, demonstrating minimal measurement error variance.
• Average Variance Extracted (AVE): AVE values calculated across studies consistently ranged from .75 to .86, confirming that the latent construct accounts for the overwhelming majority of variance in the observed items.

Test-Retest Stability and Contextual Sensitivity

Because the FISI is frequently employed as an outcome metric evaluating communicative interventions, it exhibits high sensitivity to organizational treatment effects while maintaining robust structural stability across test-retest intervals in control groups devoid of intervention (intra-class correlation coefficients typically > .82 over two-week intervals).

9. Factor Analysis

Extensive exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) factor analyses confirm the strict unidimensionality of the FISI scale.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During preliminary instrument refinement, principal axis factoring with promax and varimax rotations yielded an unequivocal single-factor solution. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy routinely surpassed .85, and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity was statistically significant (p < .001). A single eigenvalue substantially greater than 1.0 (typically λ > 2.45) emerged, explaining upwards of 82% to 88% of the total cumulative variance. No secondary factors approached extraction criteria.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Model Fit

When evaluated via structural equation modeling (SEM) within AMOS, LISREL, or Mplus, single-factor CFA models demonstrated exceptional fit across all recognized indices. Representative model fit statistics across studies include:

• Chi-Square / Degrees of Freedom Ratio (χ²/df): Ranged from 0.85 to 1.95 (indicating excellent fit below the 3.0 benchmark).
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .99 to 1.00 (substantially above the .95 threshold).
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .98 to .99.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .000 to .045, with 90% confidence intervals encompassing zero.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .010 to .025.

Standardized factor loadings across all three items systematically clustered between .84 and .96, confirming that both the agreement-anchored statement and the two likelihood-anchored items converge cohesively onto the underlying latent variable without requiring correlated error terms.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The FISI is a brief, highly focused self-report rating scale that can be effortlessly embedded into broader post-service questionnaires, experimental software (e.g., Qualtrics), or mobile feedback audits.

• Test Type: Psychometric self-report survey scale / behavioral intention index.
• Target Population: Consumers, platform users, employees, or crowdsourcing contributors who have interacted with an organization or submitted an idea/suggestion.
• Number of Items: 3 items.
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil, online survey, or embedded within interactive feedback portals.
• Time Required: Approximately 30 to 60 seconds.
• Response Anchors: The scale utilizes a mixed-format 7-point response continuum:
  • Item 1: 7-point Likert agreement scale (1 = “Strongly Disagree”, 4 = “Neither Agree nor Disagree”, 7 = “Strongly Agree”).
  • Item 2: 7-point Likert likelihood scale (1 = “Very Unlikely”, 4 = “Somewhat Likely / Neutral”, 7 = “Very Likely”).
  • Item 3: 7-point subjective probability scale (1 = “No Chance / Very Improbable”, 4 = “Moderate Chance”, 7 = “Certain / Very Probable”).
• Scoring Protocol: All three items are scored in a direct positive direction. No reverse-scored items are included. The individual’s overall FISI score is calculated as the arithmetic mean of the three responses:

  FISI Score = (Item 1 + Item 2 + Item 3) / 3

  Higher aggregate scores indicate a greater propensity, commitment, and probability of sharing ideas and submitting future creative suggestions to the focal organization.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Future Idea Submission Intentions scale was formally published in 2016 in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science by Paul W. Fombelle, Sterling A. Bone, and Katherine N. Lemon.

• Licensing and Academic Use: The scale items and validation data were published in an academic peer-reviewed journal published by Springer Science+Business Media. The instrument is generally accessible for non-commercial academic research, pedagogical evaluation, and scientific inquiry under standard fair-use scholarly protocols. Researchers are required to provide appropriate formal attribution and citation to the original authors (Fombelle et al., 2016).
• Commercial Applications: Commercial enterprises, proprietary software platforms, and market research consultancies seeking to integrate the scale or proprietary adaptations into fee-based diagnostic engines or automated feedback management systems should consult the journal publisher or the authors regarding copyright clearance and licensing terms.
• Fee: Free for non-commercial scholarly research.

12. References

• Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T
• Bies, R. J., & Moag, J. S. (1986). Interactional justice: Communication criteria of fairness. In R. J. Lewicki, B. H. Sheppard, & M. H. Bazerman (Eds.), Research on Negotiation in Organizations (Vol. 1, pp. 43–55). JAI Press.
• Blau, P. M. (1964). Exchange and Power in Social Life. John Wiley & Sons.
• Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813085
• Fombelle, P. W., Bone, S. A., & Lemon, K. N. (2016). Responding to the 98%: Face-enhancing strategies for dealing with rejected customer ideas. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 44(6), 685–706. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-015-0453-6
• Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. Anchor Books.
• Harmeling, C. M., Moffett, J. W., Arnold, M. J., & Carlson, B. D. (2017). Toward a theory of customer engagement marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45(3), 312–335. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-016-0509-2

13. Items of the Scale