Perceived Company Customer Care (PCCC)

Abstract

The Perceived Company Customer Care (PCCC) scale is a psychometric instrument originally operationalized by Nora J. Rifon, Sejung Marina Choi, Carrie S. Trimble, and Hairong Li in their foundational 2004 investigation of corporate sponsorship and consumer attributions published in the Journal of Advertising. Designed to evaluate consumer perceptions of corporate benevolence within the fields of cause-related marketing, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and commercial sponsorship, the scale measures the degree to which an audience attributes genuine, non-opportunistic concern for consumer welfare to a commercial entity. The instrument specifically captures altruistic corporate motives, assessing whether consumers perceive that a firm’s market actions—particularly its financial support for public health, environmental, or socio-ethical initiatives—are driven by an authentic dedication to customer wellbeing rather than pure profit maximization. Comprising three primary self-report items administered on a seven-point Likert scale, the PCCC demonstrates exceptional unidimensional psychometric properties. Across experimental conditions testing schema congruity between corporate sponsors and sponsored causes, the instrument exhibits high internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients regularly exceeding .85. Structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analyses validate its convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity, establishing that perceived customer care serves as a vital psychological mediator connecting sponsor-cause congruence to corporate credibility, brand attitudes, and consumer behavioral intentions.

Keywords

Perceived Company Customer Care, Corporate Social Responsibility, Cause-Related Marketing, Attribution Theory, Sponsor Motives, Altruistic Attributions, Consumer Skepticism, Sponsor Credibility, Brand Congruence, Psychometrics

Authors

The scale was developed and psychometrically validated by a team of leading researchers in advertising, communication, and consumer behavior:

• Nora J. Rifon, Ph.D. — Professor Emeritus in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at Michigan State University. Her scholarship centers on consumer protection, online privacy, corporate sponsorship, and health communication.
• Sejung Marina Choi, Ph.D. — Professor in the School of Media and Communication at Korea University (formerly faculty at the University of Texas at Austin). Her research specializes in digital advertising, social media marketing, and consumer psychological mechanisms.
• Carrie S. Trimble, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Marketing at Illinois Wesleyan University. Her academic work investigates cause-related marketing, advertising ethics, and consumer decision-making.
• Hairong Li, Ph.D. — Professor of Advertising in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at Michigan State University. His research focuses on digital media advertising, consumer interaction, and international marketing metrics.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Perceived Company Customer Care (PCCC) scale is to quantify consumer attributions regarding the underlying motivational drivers of corporate behavior. In an era marked by widespread consumer skepticism toward corporate communications, firms frequently engage in philanthropic initiatives, event sponsorships, and social advocacy campaigns to bolster corporate social performance perceptions. However, consumers do not merely observe these marketing activities passively; rather, they function as intuitive psychologists who scrutinize the authenticity of corporate behavior. When a corporation sponsors a public health campaign or funds an environmental conservation project, consumers spontaneously evaluate whether the firm is motivated by authentic benevolence (customer care) or cynical self-interest (commercial gain).

In research contexts, the PCCC provides marketing scientists and behavioral economists with a standardized, reliable, and parsimonious instrument to isolate perceived corporate benevolence from related constructs such as brand familiarity, perceived product quality, and corporate competence. By measuring the extent to which consumers believe a corporation genuinely cares about customer welfare within a defined domain (e.g., preventive health, ecological sustainability, or community health), researchers can model the cognitive processes that govern consumer responses to corporate citizenship initiatives. The scale addresses a fundamental methodological challenge in sponsorship research: operationalizing the psychological distinction between altruistic attributions and egoistic or profit-motivated attributions.

In applied and clinical public health contexts, understanding perceived corporate care is critical for evaluating commercial alliances with non-profit entities or public health campaigns. When commercial entities co-brand health-related messages—such as breast cancer awareness or skin cancer prevention—the public’s perception of the sponsor’s motives can determine the ultimate persuasiveness and credibility of the health message itself. If consumers attribute the sponsorship to authentic corporate customer care, message acceptance is heightened, defensive consumer skepticism is mitigated, and favorable evaluations transfer between the cause and the sponsoring brand. Conversely, if perceived customer care is low, the initiative may trigger psychological reactance, leading audiences to view the initiative as exploitative commercial propaganda, ultimately harming both corporate goodwill and public campaign compliance.

Psychological Construct

The Perceived Company Customer Care scale captures a key facet of perceived corporate benevolence, specifically localized within the domain of consumer protection, well-being, and social support. Within organizational behavior and social psychology, benevolence is recognized alongside competence and integrity as one of the three foundational pillars of organizational trustworthiness (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995). The PCCC specifically operationalizes domain-relevant benevolence, measuring consumer evaluations of whether a firm demonstrates sincere concern for the physical, psychological, or social flourishing of its constituents.

The construct is grounded in the operational distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic corporate motives:

• Intrinsic Benevolence (Altruistic Attribution): The belief that the corporation views customer well-being as an end in itself. Consumers attribute the firm’s actions to authentic pro-social values, ethical obligation, and an emotional or moral investment in the health and safety of its clientele.
• Extrinsic Opportunism (Egoistic/Profit Attribution): The belief that the corporation views customer well-being purely as an instrumental means to commercial ends, such as increasing sales volume, generating positive publicity, or deflecting regulatory scrutiny.

The PCCC isolates the first dimension—the attribution of intrinsic benevolence. Rather than evaluating generalized corporate reputation or product satisfaction, the scale focuses tightly on the consumer’s subjective assessment of corporate empathy and altruistic intent. For instance, in Rifon et al.’s (2004) initial investigation, corporate sponsorship of an informational website dedicated to skin cancer prevention was evaluated. The PCCC operationalized whether consumers perceived that the corporate sponsor was genuinely concerned about protecting consumers from dermatological disease, as opposed to merely utilizing the health topic as an opportunistic vehicle for commercial advertising.

Psychologically, the construct functions as a perceptual cognitive buffer. When consumers form high PCCC judgments, they interpret ambiguous corporate actions through a lens of psychological safety and goodwill. This perception attenuates the perceived transactional distance between the commercial enterprise and the consumer, transforming a strictly economic exchange into a pseudo-relational, communal bond. Consumers infer that the organization prioritizes consumer health and safety even when such priorities might impose short-term economic costs on the enterprise.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture underpinning the Perceived Company Customer Care scale integrates three foundational paradigms from cognitive, social, and consumer psychology:

1. Attribution Theory

Originating from the seminal work of Fritz Heider (1958) and later formalized by Harold Kelley (1973) and Edward E. Jones and Keith E. Davis (1965), Attribution Theory explains how individuals assign causal explanations to the actions of others. Kelley’s covariation model and discounting principles posit that observers systematically assess whether an actor’s behavior is driven by internal dispositions (internal attribution) or situational incentives (external attribution). In commercial interactions, consumers know that corporations operate under the situational incentive to generate financial profit. Consequently, consumers typically discount pro-social corporate actions as profit-motivated unless specific contextual cues allow for the inference of an internal disposition of genuine customer care. The PCCC measures the psychological resolution of this attributional calculation—specifically, the degree to which an internal, pro-social attribution has successfully been achieved.

2. Schema Congruity Theory

Formulated by George Mandler (1982), Schema Congruity Theory suggests that cognitive processing and affective evaluations are heavily determined by the degree of match between an incoming stimulus and preexisting mental schemas. When applied to cause-marketing and corporate alliances, congruence denotes the perceived conceptual fit or natural association between a sponsor and a sponsored cause (e.g., a sunscreen manufacturer sponsoring skin cancer prevention, versus a financial institution sponsoring skin cancer prevention). Rifon et al. (2004) demonstrated that high sponsor-cause congruence activates well-aligned cognitive schemas, enabling consumers to logically connect the firm’s core competencies to the domain of care. This perceived congruence increases the plausibility of perceived customer care, as consumers infer that the firm possesses a natural, enduring, and substantive commitment to that particular social problem.

3. The Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM)

Developed by Marian Friestad and Peter Wright (1994), the Persuasion Knowledge Model delineates how consumers accumulate and deploy knowledge about persuasion tactics to cope with marketing interventions. When exposed to a marketing communication, consumers activate “persuasion knowledge” to decode the agent’s motives, strategies, and psychological goals. If an initiative appears overtly manipulative or dissonant, persuasion knowledge triggers defensive skepticism, driving consumers to attribute extrinsic, manipulative motives to the sponsor. The PCCC captures the inverse cognitive state: the successful mitigation of skepticism wherein persuasion knowledge does not undermine the perceived sincerity of the firm’s pro-social behavior.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Perceived Company Customer Care scale has been corroborated through structural equation modeling, laboratory experiments, and cross-sectional survey designs.

Construct and Convergent Validity

In the original validation study by Rifon et al. (2004), construct validity was confirmed through structural equation modeling (SEM). Standardized factor loadings for the three indicators loaded heavily on the latent customer care construct (all standardized $lambda > .80$, $p < .001$), demonstrating high convergent validity. The average variance extracted (AVE) exceeded the standard .50 threshold, establishing that the variance captured by the underlying latent construct is substantially larger than the variance attributable to measurement error. Convergent validity was further demonstrated through robust, statistically significant positive correlations with related benevolence constructs, such as sponsor trustworthiness ($r = .58$ to $.65$, $p < .001$) and corporate altruism.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established by comparing the PCCC against competing attributional and evaluative dimensions, including profit motive attributions, corporate expertise, and general attitude toward the website ($A_{web}$). In confirmatory factor models, the correlation between perceived customer care and profit-driven motives was either non-significant or weakly negative, confirming that perceived altruistic customer care and commercial opportunism occupy distinct cognitive dimensions rather than polar ends of a single continuum. Furthermore, Fornell-Larcker criterion tests showed that the square root of the AVE for the PCCC was greater than any inter-construct correlation involving the scale, confirming discriminant distinctiveness.

Predictive and Mediating Validity

The PCCC exhibits strong criterion-related predictive validity. Rifon et al. (2004) showed that perceived customer care serves as a key mediator in the sponsorship persuasion process:

• High congruence between the corporate sponsor and the health cause directly increased perceived customer care ($eta = .32$, $p < .01$).
• Perceived customer care, in turn, exerted a direct positive effect on sponsor credibility ($eta = .41$, $p < .001$), encompassing perceived expertise and trustworthiness.
• Ultimately, perceived customer care indirectly enhanced attitude toward the sponsor ($eta = .28$, $p < .01$) and consumer purchase intentions.

Subsequent studies in consumer ethics and corporate philanthropy have replicated these mediating effects, demonstrating that without establishing perceived customer care, corporate social responsibility initiatives fail to translate into tangible consumer brand equity.

Reliability

The Perceived Company Customer Care instrument displays consistently high internal reliability across independent samples and experimental manipulations.

Internal Consistency

In the scale’s initial psychometric assessment across diverse experimental conditions manipulating sponsor-cause congruence and health topics, Rifon et al. (2004) reported internal consistency reliability coefficients well above conventional psychometric benchmarks:

• Original Development Sample: Cronbach’s alpha ranged from $\alpha = .86$ to $\alpha = .91$ across experimental treatment groups.
• Composite Reliability: Confirmatory structural models yielded composite reliability (CR) values exceeding .88, demonstrating that the individual indicators consistently reflect the common latent factor.
• Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-total correlations across all items consistently surpassed .70, confirming that no single item introduced non-systematic error variance or unshared construct variance.

Replication and Cross-Sample Stability

Replication studies applying the PCCC in various marketing contexts—including environmental sustainability campaigns, philanthropic disaster relief, and healthy eating sponsorships—have documented stable Cronbach’s alpha figures, typically spanning .84 to .93. The scale maintains high internal consistency across diverse respondent demographics, student and non-student consumer panels, and both laboratory and online field settings.

Factor Analysis

The dimensionality of the Perceived Company Customer Care instrument has been rigorously evaluated using both exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) factor analytic techniques.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial principal components and principal axis factoring procedures extract a clean, single-factor solution. The first unrotated eigenvalue accounts for over 75% of the total variance across the three items, with all subsequent eigenvalues dropping significantly below 0.50 (well beneath the Kaiser criterion eigenvalue-greater-than-one threshold). The scree plot displays a sharp drop-off after the first component, confirming the strict unidimensionality of the construct. Factor loadings from EFA procedures consistently fall between .82 and .92, with communalities ($h^2$) exceeding .68.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Model Fit

When evaluated within comprehensive measurement models including multidimensional corporate credibility and consumer attitude constructs, the single-factor structure of the PCCC exhibits superior goodness-of-fit metrics. In maximum likelihood estimation, the three-item customer care factor consistently demonstrates excellent fit indices:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): $ge .98$
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): $ge .97$
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): $le .05$ (with 90% confidence intervals spanning .00 to .08)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $le .03$
• Chi-Square to Degrees of Freedom Ratio ($\chi^2 / df$): Consistently non-significant or maintaining a ratio below 2.0.

Because the isolated measurement model for a three-indicator factor is mathematically just-identified (zero degrees of freedom), CFA model verification is evaluated within a multi-factor structural framework. Across multi-construct models, all standardized regression paths from the latent PCCC factor to its observed indicators remain uniform and highly significant ($p < .001$), confirming structural stability without requiring post-hoc error covariance adjustments.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The PCCC is structured as a brief self-report measurement instrument designed for administration in academic research, corporate brand tracking, and public relations testing.

• Construct Assessed: Perceived Company Customer Care (PCCC) / Altruistic Corporate Motive Attribution.
• Measurement Paradigm: Direct self-report questionnaire.
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil questionnaire, computer-assisted self-interviewing (CASI), or online survey platforms (e.g., Qualtrics, MTurk, Prolific).
• Item Inventory: 3 closed-ended indicator items.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scale (1 = “Strongly Disagree” to 7 = “Strongly Agree”), or equivalent 7-point semantic differential / bipolar rating scales depending on experimental context.
• Target Population: Adult consumers, prospective buyers, website visitors, and corporate stakeholders.
• Completion Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes.
• Scoring Protocol:
  • All three items are positively keyed; no reverse-scoring is required.
  • An overall Perceived Company Customer Care composite score is calculated by computing the arithmetic mean across the three items:
  • $$\text{PCCC Score} = \frac{\text{Item 1} + \text{Item 2} + \text{Item 3}}{3}$$
  • Scores range from 1.00 to 7.00, where higher scores indicate stronger consumer attribution of authentic corporate benevolence, altruism, and customer well-being concern.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Perceived Company Customer Care scale was published in 2004 in the Journal of Advertising by Nora J. Rifon, Sejung Marina Choi, Carrie S. Trimble, and Hairong Li. The publication rights are held by the American Academy of Advertising and Taylor & Francis Group.

For non-commercial, academic, and scientific research purposes, the scale items may generally be used under scholarly fair-use principles, provided appropriate citation is given to the original 2004 article. Commercial practitioners, corporate brand audit agencies, and market research firms seeking to embed the scale into proprietary analytics platforms or commercial diagnostics should consult Taylor & Francis or the original authors regarding licensing and copyright compliance.

References

• Becker-Olsen, K. L., Cudmore, B. A., & Hill, R. P. (2006). The impact of perceived corporate social responsibility on consumer behavior. Journal of Business Research, 59(1), 46–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2005.01.001
• Ellen, P. S., Webb, D. J., & Mohr, L. A. (2006). Building corporate associations: Consumer attributions for corporate socially responsible programs. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 34(2), 147–157. https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070305284976
• Forehand, M. R., & Grier, S. (2003). When is honesty the best policy? The effect of stated company intent on consumer skepticism. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 13(3), 349–356. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327663JCP1303_15
• Friestad, M., & Wright, P. (1994). The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How people cope with persuasion attempts. Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1086/209380
• Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1037/10628-000
• Jones, E. E., & Davis, K. E. (1965). From acts to dispositions: The attribution process in person perception. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 219–266). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60107-0
• Kelley, H. H. (1973). The processes of causal attribution. American Psychologist, 28(2), 107–128. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0034225
• Mandler, G. (1982). The structure of value: Accounting for taste. In M. S. Clark & S. T. Fiske (Eds.), Affect and Cognition: The 17th Annual Carnegie Symposium on Cognition (pp. 3–36). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 709–734. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1995.9508080332
• Rifon, N. J., Choi, S. M., Trimble, C. S., & Li, H. (2004). Congruence effects in sponsorship: The mediating role of sponsor credibility and consumer attributions of sponsor motive. Journal of Advertising, 33(1), 29–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2004.10639151

Items of the Scale