Knowledge of the Brand (Other Person)

1. Abstract

The Knowledge of the Brand (Other Person) scale is a concise, unidimensional psychometric instrument developed by Zhe Zhang and Vanessa M. Patrick (2021) to measure an observer’s subjective assessment of another individual’s brand-specific expertise and familiarity. While traditional marketing and psychological literature predominantly assesses self-reported consumer knowledge via first-person subjective or objective metrics, interpersonal interactions, word-of-mouth (WOM) dynamics, and digital communications require robust measures of other-directed cognitive appraisals. The instrument comprises three items evaluated on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree). Items operationalize perceived competence, depth of information, and domain familiarity attributed to a communicator based on external behavioral or linguistic cues—specifically demonstrated in Zhang and Patrick’s investigations of informal brand nickname usage (e.g., referring to McDonald’s as “Mickey D’s”). Psychometric evaluations demonstrate strong internal consistency (Cronbach’s α typically exceeding .90 across experimental conditions), clear unifactorial structure, high convergent validity with constructs such as perceived authenticity and source credibility, and distinct discriminant validity against general interpersonal warmth. The scale provides consumer psychologists, sociolinguists, and communication researchers with an empirical tool for evaluating social transmission, brand evangelism, opinion leadership, and observational inference in both laboratory experiments and field settings.

2. Keywords

brand knowledge attribution, perceived brand expertise, other-person perception, consumer inference, brand nicknames, source credibility, word-of-mouth, interpersonal perception, consumer psychology, psychometrics

3. Authors

The scale was developed and empirically validated by:

• Zhe Zhang: Assistant Professor of Marketing, School of Business, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA. Research specializations include consumer psychology, brand relationships, sociolinguistics, and social signaling.
• Vanessa M. Patrick: Professor of Marketing and Associate Dean for Research, C. T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA. Renowned expert in consumer behavior, design and aesthetics, everyday consumer self-talk, and brand communication strategies.

Correspondence regarding the foundational research article can be directed to the authors via academic institutional portals or through the American Marketing Association publication offices for the Journal of Marketing.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Knowledge of the Brand (Other Person) scale is to quantify an individual’s evaluation of another actor’s cognitive mastery, familiarity, and information depth concerning a specific brand. Historically, the measurement of brand knowledge has focused almost exclusively on the self—evaluating either what consumers believe they know (subjective knowledge) or what verifiable facts they retain (objective knowledge). However, contemporary consumer environments are heavily mediated by social exchanges, online reviews, social media influencer endorsements, and peer discussions. In these contexts, consumers constantly form inferences regarding the expertise of the source delivering the message.

Zhang and Patrick (2021) introduced this scale to investigate the cognitive processes through which stylistic communication choices—specifically the spontaneous adoption of colloquial brand nicknames rather than formal brand monikers—influence receiver appraisals. In their investigation, the researchers demonstrated that when a speaker employs a consumer-generated brand nickname (such as “Coke” for Coca-Cola, “Beemer” for BMW, or “Mickey D’s” for McDonald’s), listeners interpret this linguistic act as an indicator of organic immersion within the brand community. The purpose of measuring other-person brand knowledge is therefore to capture the cognitive mediator between observed communicative behaviors and downstream consumer outcomes, including information authenticity, communicator trust, and willingness to follow product recommendations.

In applied research settings, the tool enables scholars to address vital questions: Does peer expertise alter the persuasive power of user-generated content? Can third-person expertise attributions buffer against skepticism regarding sponsored consumer reviews? In commercial applications, marketing professionals utilize the scale during influencer selection protocols, brand ambassador evaluations, and copy-testing procedures to ensure that promotional representatives project legitimate, credible, and deeply internalized brand familiarity rather than scripted commercial affiliations.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by this scale is attributed brand knowledge (specifically, other-person brand familiarity and expertise). In social cognition, individuals continuously engage in attributional reasoning to deduce underlying competence, motives, and characteristics of others from observed verbal and non-verbal signals. Attributed brand knowledge represents a specialized facet of source credibility, situated at the nexus of cognitive social psychology and consumer behavior.

Attributed brand knowledge consists of three tightly interrelated semantic dimensions:

• Perceived Cognitive Breadth: The extent to which the observer judges the target individual as possessing a wide repository of brand-related facts, history, product lineups, and situational nuances (reflected in Item 1: “This person has a lot of knowledge about the brand”).
• Perceived Cognitive Depth: The belief that the target’s understanding is not superficial, but reflects rich personal experience, operational familiarity, and substantive comprehension (captured by Item 2: “This person knows a lot about the brand”).
• Perceived Competence and Authority: The overarching attribution that the target qualifies as an authentic reference point or knowledgeable informant regarding the brand’s offerings (captured by Item 3: “This person is knowledgeable about the brand”).

Unlike self-reported knowledge—which is prone to self-serving biases, hubris, or the Dunning–Kruger effect—attributed knowledge operates purely as a decoding mechanism within an interpersonal receiver. The construct is functionally distinct from source warmth, perceived benevolence, or attitudinal alignment. A consumer might perceive an antagonistic online reviewer as possessing extraordinarily high brand knowledge while viewing them as low in benevolence. By isolating the cognitive dimension of other-person familiarity, the construct enables fine-grained modeling of epistemic trust in commercial communication ecosystems.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework underpinning this scale synthesizes Signaling Theory, Attribution Theory, and Sociolinguistic Identity Theory.

Signaling Theory and Information Asymmetry

In social and economic transactions, information asymmetry is pervasive: one party rarely possesses complete visibility into another person’s true internal competencies, intentions, or experiential history. According to signaling theory, individuals rely on observable behaviors, linguistic codes, and symbolic displays as “signals” to infer unobservable underlying qualities. When a communicator discusses a product, receivers examine subtle communicative cues to ascertain whether the communicator possesses genuine domain mastery. In Zhang and Patrick’s (2021) formulation, using an organic brand nickname operates as a costly or culturally bounded signal: it indicates that the speaker has engaged with the subcultural lexicon surrounding the brand, prompting the observer to infer substantial, internalized brand knowledge.

Attribution Theory

Drawing on Fritz Heider’s foundational attribution theory and subsequent extensions by Harold Kelley (e.g., the Covariation Model), observers act as naive scientists, seeking causal explanations for observed phenomena. When evaluating a message, receivers assign dispositions to the source. The attribution of brand knowledge represents a dispositional judgment: the observer concludes that the target’s discourse stems from high baseline domain competence rather than superficial repetition of external promotional scripts.

Sociolinguistics and In-Group Authenticity

From a sociolinguistic perspective, language serves not only to convey semantic content but also to signal social belonging, cultural capital, and group membership. Slang, shorthand, and nicknames function as linguistic shibboleths confirming in-group status. When an individual fluidly employs a brand nickname, receivers decode this marker as evidence of prolonged, authentic contact with the brand’s culture. This attribution directly elevates the receiver’s estimation of the speaker’s brand knowledge, which subsequently elevates the perceived authenticity of the conveyed information.

7. Validity

Validation of the Knowledge of the Brand (Other Person) scale was conducted across multiple experimental and behavioral studies documented by Zhang and Patrick (2021), confirming multiple facets of construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity was established through controlled laboratory experiments manipulating communicative stimuli. When participants were exposed to communicators who employed organic brand nicknames versus formal corporate monikers or unfamiliar neologisms, the scale reliably detected statistically significant differences in perceived knowledge. Factor analysis revealed that all three items consistently load strongly on a single construct (loadings > .85), explaining over 80% of the variance across diverse experimental iterations. Convergent validity is evidenced by strong, theoretically coherent correlations with established measures of perceived source expertise (typically r > .70, p < .001) and information authenticity (r ranging from .55 to .68, p < .001).

Discriminant Validity

To verify discriminant validity, the scale was tested against conceptually adjacent but distinct constructs, including source warmth, general likability, and communicator extroversion. Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values for the scale exceeded .75 across studies, comfortably surpassing the squared inter-construct correlations with warmth (r² < .20) and perceived similarity (r² < .25). Observers demonstrated the cognitive ability to rate an individual as highly knowledgeable about a brand while simultaneously rating them low on personal liking, establishing that the instrument does not suffer from a generic positive halo effect.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

The scale exhibits robust predictive validity regarding both psychological states and downstream behavioral intentions. In mediation analyses (Hayes PROCESS Model 4 and Model 6), perceived other-person brand knowledge functioned as a key psychological mediator translating linguistic choices into information authenticity perceptions, which in turn predicted consumers’ willingness to purchase the recommended product, share the content, and utilize product recommendations.

8. Reliability

The reliability of the Knowledge of the Brand (Other Person) scale has been systematically confirmed across multiple experimental samples characterized by diverse demographic profiles, product categories (fast food, technology, automotive, fashion), and stimulus mediums (written social media posts, transcribed dialogues, and video transcripts).

• Internal Consistency: Across the experimental studies reported in Zhang and Patrick (2021), Cronbach’s alpha (α) values consistently ranged between .91 and .96. For instance, in Study 1 of their published work, the three-item instrument demonstrated an internal reliability coefficient of α = .94. Subsequent replication studies with alternative brand pairings yielded α values of .93 and .95, confirming that the three items operate with exceptional homogeneity.
• Composite Reliability: Confirmatory structural equation models indicate composite reliability (CR) values exceeding .92, well above the accepted academic threshold of .70 recommended for psychometric assessment.
• Standard Error of Measurement: Given the extremely high inter-item correlations (average inter-item correlation r > .80), the scale minimizes random measurement error, providing precise estimates of perceived expertise with minimal respondent burden.

9. Factor Analysis

Empirical evaluations of the dimensionality of the scale confirm a strictly unidimensional structure. Both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) have been executed across experimental investigations.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Principal Axis Factoring and Principal Component Analyses without rotation yield a single dominant factor with an eigenvalue substantially greater than 1.0 (typically ranging between 2.45 and 2.75), explaining between 82% and 91% of the total variance across datasets. Scree plot analyses consistently reveal a sharp elbow after the initial factor, with secondary eigenvalues dropping well below 0.35, verifying that multi-factor solutions are unviable and theoretically unsupported.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

When evaluated within structural equation modeling (SEM) frameworks, the unifactorial specification demonstrates exceptional goodness-of-fit indices across observed samples:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): > .99 (frequently approaching 1.00 in just-identified models)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): > .98
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): < .02
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): < .05 (90% CI [.000, .078])

All standardized factor loadings (λ) are statistically significant (p < .001) and exceed .88, demonstrating that each item serves as a potent empirical indicator of the attributed knowledge construct.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational characteristics and structural format of the Knowledge of the Brand (Other Person) instrument are summarized below:

• Instrument Type: Observer-rating psychometric scale (third-person subjective attribution instrument).
• Construct Assessed: Perceived brand familiarity, cognitive depth, and domain expertise attributed to another person.
• Number of Items: 3 items (unidimensional).
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil questionnaire, online survey engine (e.g., Qualtrics, CloudResearch, Prolific), or computerized laboratory interface.
• Completion Time: Approximately 30 to 45 seconds, making it ideal for experimental designs, multi-cell matrices, and continuous real-time consumer tracking.
• Response Format: 7-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 7 = Strongly agree).
• Target Population: Consumers, message recipients, social media observers, market researchers, and experimental participants evaluating peer communicators, reviewers, or influencers.
• Scoring and Aggregation Rules: There are no reverse-coded items. Items are summed and averaged to generate a single composite score of perceived brand knowledge attributed to the target person, with values ranging from 1.00 to 7.00. Higher mean scores indicate higher attributed brand expertise.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Knowledge of the Brand (Other Person) scale was published in 2021 in the Journal of Marketing by the American Marketing Association (AMA). As standard in academic behavioral research, the instrument items were developed for non-commercial scientific inquiry and psychological research.

• Permissions: Researchers wishing to utilize the 3-item measure for scholarly, academic, and non-commercial educational purposes may do so under academic fair-use conventions, provided proper attribution and bibliographic citation are given to Zhang and Patrick (2021).
• Fees: There are no royalties or usage fees associated with administering the three scale items for academic research. Commercial entities intending to incorporate the measurement tool into proprietary psychometric platforms, commercial testing software, or monetized diagnostic instruments should consult permissions policies established by the American Marketing Association and the original authors.

12. References

The following academic publications document the development, validation, and theoretical underpinnings of the scale:

• Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1037/10628-000
• Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation (Vol. 15, pp. 192–238). University of Nebraska Press.
• Pornpitakpan, C. (2004). The persuasiveness of source credibility: A critical review of five decades’ evidence. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 34(2), 243–281. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2004.tb02547.x
• Spence, M. (1973). Job market signaling. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87(3), 355–374. https://doi.org/10.2307/1882010
• Zhang, Z., & Patrick, V. M. (2021). Mickey D’s has more street cred than McDonald’s: Consumer brand nickname use signals information authenticity. Journal of Marketing, 85(5), 58–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022242921999684

13. Items of the Scale