Permanent Patronage Abandonment Likelihood (PPAL)

1. Abstract

The Permanent Patronage Abandonment Likelihood (PPAL) scale is a specialized psychometric instrument engineered within consumer psychology and service marketing to quantify an individual’s subjective probability of irreversibly terminating their relationship with a service provider, physical establishment, or retail venue in favor of competing alternatives. Originally adapted and operationalized by Kirk, Peck, and Swain (2018), with linguistic and structural foundations adapted from Ashley and Noble (2014), the PPAL scale measures definitive customer churn intentions rather than transient switching or temporary avoidance behaviors. The instrument exists in both two-item and three-item unidimensional configurations, scored using 7-point Likert-type or probability-anchored semantic differential response formats. The construct specifically captures the terminal consumer response within the exit-voice-loyalty paradigm, demonstrating particular sensitivity to psychological boundary transgressions, service failures, interpersonal territorial disputes, and psychological ownership infringements in physical and digital service environments. Psychometrically, the scale demonstrates robust internal consistency reliability across experimental and field studies (Cronbach’s $\alpha$ consistently ranging from .87 to .94) and strong convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity when assessed against related constructs such as retaliation, negative word-of-mouth (NWOM), perceived territorial infringement, and affective commitment. This article provides a comprehensive academic overview of the scale’s theoretical underpinnings, structural validity, factor stability, psychometric properties, and administrative protocols.

2. Keywords

Permanent Patronage Abandonment Likelihood, PPAL, psychological ownership, consumer territoriality, customer churn, service switching intention, consumer exit behavior, retail patronage, customer defection, service failure

3. Authors

The scale was adapted, validated, and integrated into experimental consumer behavior research by:

• Colleen P. Kirk, D.P.S. — Associate Professor of Marketing, School of Management, New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), Old Westbury, NY, USA. Specialist in consumer behavior, psychological ownership, consumer territoriality, and human-computer interaction.
• Joann Peck, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing and Irwin Maier Professor of Business, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA. Renowned expert on consumer touch (haptic information processing), psychological ownership, and sensory marketing.
• Scott D. Swain, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing, College of Business, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA. Scholar specializing in consumer decision-making, marketing methodology, and relationship marketing.

Foundational framing and item wording roots stem from prior empirical work on retail competitive dynamics and customer patronage abandonment by Christy M. Ashley, Ph.D. (University of Rhode Island) and Stephanie M. Noble, Ph.D. (University of Tennessee, Knoxville).

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Permanent Patronage Abandonment Likelihood (PPAL) scale is to measure an absolute, enduring behavioral intention: the customer’s self-assessed probability of definitively severing patronage ties with a specific retailer, hospitality venue, public service, or commercial firm, accompanied by a shift toward competing providers. In marketing and consumer research, behavioral intentions are widely recognized as the most immediate and statistically potent cognitive antecedents of actual behavior (Theory of Planned Behavior; Ajzen, 1991).

Standard retail satisfaction metrics often conflate general customer dissatisfaction, temporary avoidance, vocal complaining, and situational brand switching with terminal defection. A consumer may express anger or voice grievances yet maintain repeated patronage due to geographic proximity, habitual inertia, or structural switching costs. Conversely, permanent patronage abandonment signifies the irrevocable collapse of relational capital, where psychological switching barriers are completely superseded by an active motivation to exit. The PPAL scale was specifically designed to isolate this irreversible threshold of consumer defection, providing researchers with a sensitive, low-burden metric to determine under what situational or psychological conditions consumers cross from manageable dissatisfaction to terminal churn.

Beyond traditional service failure paradigms, Kirk, Peck, and Swain (2018) employed the PPAL scale to investigate the behavioral fallout of psychological ownership violations and territorial defense mechanisms. When consumers develop a perceived sense of ownership over an object, physical territory (e.g., a favored table at a coffee shop, a personal workstation in a shared office space), or relational resource, infringement by other consumers or by firm employees triggers intense territorial responses. These responses range from subtle defensive posturing to retaliatory aggression and, ultimately, complete abandonment of the firm. The PPAL scale serves as the definitive outcome metric capturing whether an environment has become psychologically toxic or inhospitable enough to compel the consumer to forfeit all future interactions.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct captured by the PPAL scale is permanent patronage abandonment, which is characterized as a high-conviction, future-oriented behavioral intention marked by three central conceptual properties: terminality, exclusivity of substitution, and cognitive finality.

5.1 Dimensional Properties and Conceptual Boundaries

Unlike transient service switching, which allows for dynamic multi-brand loyalty or temporary category exploration, permanent patronage abandonment reflects a complete termination of the relational contract. The construct contains several specific psychological facets:

• Cognitive Irreversibility (Terminality): The individual does not merely foresee a pause or reduction in frequency of visits; they foresee a complete cessation of patronage. The relationship with the brand or establishment is mentally categorized as concluded.
• Competitive Substitution: Abandonment is structurally coupled with displacement. The consumer actively intends to transfer their transaction volume, foot traffic, or digital engagement to an alternative provider or competitor. This differentiates the construct from category-level demand reduction or personal budget contraction.
• Subjective Probability / Behavioral Conviction: The scale measures subjective likelihood, reflecting the subjective probability distribution the consumer assigns to their own future behavior under hypothetical or actual operationalized scenarios.

5.2 Contrast with Adjacent Constructs

To ensure precision in psychometric assessment, the PPAL scale must be demarcated from adjacent behavioral and affective constructs:

• Temporary Switching vs. Permanent Abandonment: Temporary switching involves situational variance (e.g., visiting a rival coffee shop because one’s regular store is closed or crowded). PPAL captures an enduring structural decision never to return.
• Negative Word-of-Mouth (NWOM): While NWOM involves communicative actions directed at external audiences (warning peers, leaving punitive online reviews), PPAL is strictly an exit behavior directed at self-preservation and boundary re-establishment.
• Passive Dissatisfaction: Dissatisfaction is an evaluative affective state (Oliver, 1980). A consumer can remain chronically dissatisfied yet stay loyal due to monopoly conditions or convenience. PPAL measures the actualized behavioral commitment to exit.
• Retaliation / Vindictive Behavior: Retaliation seeks to inflict damage on the firm or an infringing party (e.g., sabotaging amenities, confronting employees). PPAL represents an avoidance or self-removal strategy, representing withdrawal rather than confrontation.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical foundations of the PPAL scale span three distinct literature streams within psychology, sociology, and microeconomics: the exit-voice-loyalty paradigm, the theory of psychological ownership, and the spatial anthropology of human territoriality.

6.1 Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty Paradigm

The foundational bedrock of patronage termination theory rests upon Albert O. Hirschman’s (1970) Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (EVL) model. Hirschman postulated that economic actors confronted with declining quality or objectionable conditions inside an institution or market entity have two functional economic responses: Voice (attempting to improve conditions through communication, complaint, protest, or reform) and Exit (withdrawing completely from the relationship to purchase goods elsewhere). Loyalty acts as a psychological mediator that delays exit and stimulates voice. The PPAL scale is a direct operationalization of the pure Exit response in its most acute, non-negotiable form. When the perceived psychological costs of remaining outweigh relational capital and voice mechanisms fail or are perceived as futile, exit becomes the dominant strategy.

6.2 Psychological Ownership Theory

Psychological ownership is defined as a cognitive-affective condition in which an individual feels that a target of ownership (material or immaterial) is “mine” or “ours” (Pierce, Kostova, & Dirks, 2001, 2003). It emerges through three primary human routes: control over the target, intimate knowledge of the target, and investment of the self into the target. In retail and service environments, consumers readily develop psychological ownership over physical tables, regular seats, personal lockers, specific service employees, or community spaces (Peck & Shu, 2018).

When another actor impinges upon an entity over which an individual feels psychological ownership, it produces profound cognitive dissonance and feelings of violation. According to Kirk et al. (2018), when an individual feels strong psychological ownership over an establishment or space, but perceives that ownership to be undermined, ignored, or facilitated to an infringing outsider by the firm itself, the sense of betrayal is magnified. The consumer experiences what Pierce et al. term the “dark side” of psychological ownership, culminating in defensive withdrawal and the decision to permanently abandon the patronage relationship.

6.3 Territoriality and Boundary Infringement

Human territoriality involves behavioral strategies designed to communicate, reserve, or defend a physical or symbolic spatial area, entity, or idea against others (Brown, 1987; Brown, Lawrence, & Robinson, 2005). When an individual’s personal or socio-spatial boundaries are encroached upon, humans activate defense mechanisms. If defensive marking or communication fails to deter the perceived intruder, or if the territorial holder feels that the environment is no longer defensible or welcoming, spatial flight takes precedence. In commercial settings, spatial flight manifests as permanent patronage abandonment.

7. Validity

Empirical evidence establishing the validity of the PPAL scale is derived from multi-study experimental designs and field trials conducted across various consumer environments, including coffee shops, dining venues, and co-working environments (Kirk et al., 2018; Ashley & Noble, 2014).

7.1 Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity is substantiated through robust convergence with theoretically correlated measures of relationship distress and behavioral disruption. In the structural models tested by Kirk et al. (2018), the PPAL scale correlated strongly and positively with:

• Perceived Territorial Infringement: ($r = .58$ to $.69, p < .001$), confirming that greater perceived boundary violations drive higher subjective likelihoods of abandonment.
• Negative Word-of-Mouth (NWOM) Intentions: ($r = .61$ to $.73, p < .001$), demonstrating that high abandonment likelihood co-occurs with hostile external communication.
• Felt Resentment and Anger: ($r = .52$ to $.64, p < .001$), proving the affective validity of the construct as an outcome of negative emotional arousal.

Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values for the scale across empirical trials consistently exceed the .70 threshold, well beyond the standard .50 benchmark recommended by Fornell and Larcker (1981), confirming convergent validity at the latent variable level.

7.2 Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established using the Fornell–Larcker criterion and the Heterotrait-Monotrait (HTMT) ratio of correlations. The square root of the AVE for PPAL (typically $\sqrt{\text{AVE}} > .88$) routinely exceeded its bivariate correlations with all adjacent latent constructs, including:

• General Dissatisfaction ($r = .48$, HTMT = .54)
• Direct Retaliation against Customers ($r = .39$, HTMT = .43)
• Temporary Avoidance ($r = .51$, HTMT = .58)

These findings demonstrate that PPAL captures a unique psychometric footprint: the final, permanent severance of patronage, distinct from active interpersonal hostility or momentary dissatisfaction.

7.3 Predictive and Criterion Validity

In experimental scenarios manipulating psychological ownership violations (e.g., an employee or customer rearranging a regular patron’s belongings or taking a regular seat), the PPAL scale demonstrated high criterion sensitivity. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and moderated mediation models revealed that PPAL scores were significantly higher in conditions with high perceived territorial infringement ($F > 42.0, p < .001, \eta_p^2 > .20$). Furthermore, PPAL successfully predicted actual subsequent behavioral choices in controlled laboratory allocation tasks, where participants were offered promotional vouchers for the target establishment versus a competing establishment.

8. Reliability

The internal consistency reliability of the PPAL scale has been documented across varied empirical settings, consistently demonstrating high reliability in both its two-item and three-item configurations.

8.1 Internal Consistency Metrics

Across the experimental investigations reported in Kirk, Peck, and Swain (2018), internal consistency was thoroughly examined:

• Cronbach’s Alpha ($\alpha$): In Study 1 and Study 2, the scale yielded Cronbach’s alpha values between $.87$ and $.93$. In subsequent studies examining boundary defenses and employee intervention, alpha coefficients remained consistently high ($\alpha = .91$ to $.94$).
• Composite Reliability (CR): Structural equation modeling revealed composite reliability values spanning $.89$ to $.94$, far exceeding the psychometric threshold of $.70$ for structural modeling (Hair et al., 2010).
• Inter-Item Correlations: In the two-item version, Pearson inter-item correlation coefficients ($r$) typically ranged from $.78$ to $.88$ ($p < .0001$), indicating strong shared variance without complete redundancy.

8.2 Stability and Generalizability

Because the scale is primarily administered within experimental and cross-sectional diagnostic settings, standard test-retest reliability across multi-week intervals is generally moderated by the temporal stability of the service relationship itself. However, short-interval test-retest evaluations (48-hour to 72-hour intervals) within control groups unexposed to experimental manipulations produced intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) exceeding $.84$, indicating high measurement stability in baseline conditions.

9. Factor Analysis

The latent dimensionality of the PPAL scale has been examined using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) within structural equation modeling frameworks.

9.1 Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Principal Axis Factoring and Maximum Likelihood extraction with Promax and Varimax rotations across baseline datasets consistently identify a single primary eigenvalue exceeding 1.0 (typically spanning 2.2 to 2.7 out of 3.0 maximum), explaining between 75% and 88% of the total item variance. The scree test clearly displays a sharp break after the first factor, confirming strict unidimensionality. In three-item specifications, all individual item factor loadings exceed $.85$ on this primary latent construct, with negligible cross-loadings across other situational factors.

9.2 Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Model Fit

When evaluated in multi-construct measurement models containing parallel constructs such as territorial responses, brand attachment, psychological ownership, and negative word-of-mouth, the unidimensional PPAL scale demonstrates superior fit indices:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values consistently exceed $.98$ (often $.99$ to $1.00$).
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Values consistently exceed $.97$.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Values regularly range from $.000$ to $.048$, well below the conservative $.06$ threshold.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values consistently fall below $.030$.

Standardized path loadings ($lambda$) from the latent PPAL construct to the manifest indicators are robust: Item 1 typically demonstrates $\lambda \approx .91-.94$; Item 2 demonstrates $\lambda \approx .88-.93$; and Item 3 (when included) demonstrates $\lambda \approx .84-.89$. Standardized residuals are minimal, confirming that an unconstrained single-factor model accounts for observed covariance without necessitating localized error covariance terms.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The structural characteristics, administration formats, and scoring protocols for the PPAL scale are summarized below:

• Construct Measured: Subjective likelihood of permanently terminating patronage at a commercial establishment and switching to a competitor.
• Instrument Type: Self-report psychometric survey scale / experimental dependent variable measure.
• Item Count:
  • Full Version: 3 items.
  • Short Version: 2 items (commonly utilized in experimental research designs to reduce respondent fatigue; excludes Item 3).
• Response Format: Standard 7-point Likert scale (typically anchored from $1 = \text{Strongly Disagree}$ to $7 = \text{Strongly Agree}$, or $1 = \text{Very Unlikely}$ to $7 = \text{Very Likely}$).
• Administration Time: Approximately 30 to 60 seconds.
• Scoring Procedure:
  • All items are framed in a direct (positive) orientation toward abandonment; no reverse scoring is required.
  • Individual item scores are summed and averaged to create an overall composite PPAL index ranging from 1.0 to 7.0.
  • Higher mean scores indicate an elevated, acute probability of permanent customer defection and switching.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Permanent Patronage Abandonment Likelihood scale was adapted and formally operationalized in its current psychological ownership framework by Colleen P. Kirk, Joann Peck, and Scott D. Swain in their 2018 article published in the Journal of Consumer Research (Volume 45, Issue 1, pages 148–168). The phrasing roots trace back to research on retail dynamics by Christy M. Ashley and Stephanie M. Noble (2014) in the Journal of Retailing.

Licensing and Academic Use: The scale is published within academic journal articles for scholarly inquiry. Under standard academic fair use principles, the scale may be utilized by university researchers, students, and institutional scholars for non-commercial academic research without licensing fees, provided that formal attribution and bibliographic citation are accorded to Kirk, Peck, and Swain (2018) and Ashley and Noble (2014). Commercial enterprises, market research corporations, and consulting agencies planning to incorporate the scale into proprietary commercial software, diagnostic audits, or profit-generating customer journey platforms should consult the copyright holders (the authors and academic publishers) for formal licensing agreements.

12. References

The academic literature underpinning the construct, design, and empirical validation of the PPAL scale includes the following sources:

• 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
• Ashley, C. M., & Noble, S. M. (2014). “Hold the door!” An examination of consumer perceptions of retail competitor proximity. Journal of Retailing, 90(2), 174–189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2013.11.002
• Brown, B. B. (1987). Territoriality. In D. Stokols & I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of Environmental Psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 505–531). John Wiley & Sons.
• Brown, G., Lawrence, T. B., & Robinson, S. L. (2005). Territoriality in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 30(3), 577–594. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2005.17293710
• Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800104
• Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., & Anderson, R. E. (2010). Multivariate Data Analysis (7th ed.). Prentice Hall.
• Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Harvard University Press.
• Kirk, C. P., Peck, J., & Swain, S. D. (2018). Property lines in the mind: Consumers’ psychological ownership and their territorial responses. Journal of Consumer Research, 45(1), 148–168. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucx111
• Oliver, R. L. (1980). A cognitive model of the antecedents and consequences of satisfaction decisions. Journal of Marketing Research, 17(4), 460–469. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378001700405
• Peck, J., & Shu, S. B. (Eds.). (2018). Psychological Ownership and Consumer Behavior. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77158-8
• Pierce, J. L., Kostova, T., & Dirks, K. T. (2001). Toward a theory of psychological ownership in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 298–310. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2001.4378028
• Pierce, J. L., Kostova, T., & Dirks, K. T. (2003). The state of psychological ownership: Integrating and extending a century of research. Review of General Psychology, 7(1), 84–107. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.7.1.84

13. Items of the Scale