Price-Based Sales Promotion Attitude (PBSPA)

1. Abstract

The Price-Based Sales Promotion Attitude (PBSPA) is a psychometric instrument designed to measure consumers’ subjective cognitive and affective evaluation of temporary monetary price reductions, discounts, and promotional incentives. Developed and operationalized by Garnefeld, Böhm, Klimke, and Oestreich (2018) within the context of consumer responses to ex post promotional time extensions, the scale evaluates how attractive, advantageous, and worthwhile an individual considers a specific price-based promotional offering. Comprising three concisely formulated items administered via a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 7 (“strongly agree”), the instrument exhibits robust unidimensionality and exceptional internal consistency across diverse experimental and field settings (Cronbach’s alpha values consistently exceeding .90; composite reliability values surpassing standard psychometric thresholds). This article provides a comprehensive evaluation of the PBSPA, outlining its theoretical integration within Mental Accounting and Transaction Utility Theory, its structural differentiation from broader deal-proneness constructs, its factor-analytic validation, and its practical utility in consumer psychology, behavioral economics, and strategic marketing management.

2. Keywords

Price-Based Sales Promotion Attitude, PBSPA, sales promotions, transaction utility, promotional attractiveness, perceived deal value, consumer psychology, pricing strategy, psychometrics, marketing scale, Garnefeld

3. Authors

The Price-Based Sales Promotion Attitude scale was operationalized and validated by an academic research team specializing in service management, marketing strategy, and consumer behavior:

• Ina Garnefeld: Professor of Business Administration and Service Management at the School of Human and Social Sciences / Schumpeter School of Business and Economics, University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany. Her research specializes in customer relationship management, referral marketing, sales promotions, and service recovery.
• Eva Böhm: Professor of Marketing at the Department of Business Administration and Economics, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany (formerly at Paderborn University). Her investigative work focuses on business-to-business marketing, pricing strategies, and customer value co-creation.
• Lena Klimke: Academic researcher and marketing scholar affiliated with the University of Wuppertal, Germany, whose empirical work concentrates on promotional marketing, consumer decision-making, and behavioral reactions to sales campaign designs.
• Andreas Oestreich: Marketing researcher and industry practitioner affiliated with the University of Wuppertal, Germany, focusing on empirical pricing research, retail analytics, and sales promotion mechanics.

4. Purpose

In modern consumer marketplaces, price-based promotions (such as temporary markdowns, percentage discounts, coupons, and flash sales) are omnipresent tools utilized to induce purchase acceleration, customer acquisition, and brand switching. However, an individual’s response to a price promotion is not purely economic; it is fundamentally driven by psychological evaluations of subjective utility. The primary purpose of the Price-Based Sales Promotion Attitude (PBSPA) scale is to quantify an individual’s global psychological appraisal regarding the favorability, attractiveness, and economic worth of a specific promotional deal.

While early economic literature conceptualized consumer response to discounts as a direct function of absolute dollar savings, behavioral pricing demonstrates that consumers derive psychological satisfaction distinct from simple expenditure reductions. Researchers require parsimonious, psychometrically sound instruments to assess how consumers interpret promotional cues under varying operational conditions, such as sudden deal extensions, flash sales deadlines, volume purchase requirements, and altered reference pricing structures.

In academic research, the PBSPA serves as a sensitive dependent, mediator, or moderator variable in experimental designs investigating pricing psychology. Specifically, Garnefeld et al. (2018) deployed the scale across four rigorous empirical investigations to observe how customer segments (e.g., early buyers vs. late opportunistic buyers) react when a promotion advertised as strictly limited is subsequently extended ex post. In commercial and clinical market testing contexts, the scale enables market researchers and behavioral economists to conduct A/B testing of promotional frames (e.g., “Save 20%” versus “Get $20 Off”) to determine which promotional architecture maximizes perceived attractiveness and perceived deal merit without triggering brand devaluation or promotional skepticism.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct measured by the PBSPA is defined as a consumer’s holistic, evaluative orientation toward a specific price-oriented promotional incentive. Rather than capturing an enduring consumer trait such as general price consciousness or general deal proneness (e.g., Lichtenstein, Netemeyer, & Burton, 1990), the PBSPA measures a state-level, deal-specific attitudinal judgment. This construct bridges cognitive value appraisal and affective appreciation across three complementary facets:

Perceived Attractiveness (Affective-Cognitive Appeal)

Reflected in item 1 (“I think that the promotion is attractive”), this facet represents the immediate positive aesthetic, hedonic, and motivational pull exerted by the promotion. An attractive promotion captures visual and cognitive attention, generating a preliminary positive heuristic toward the transaction. It reflects the degree to which the promotion excites interest and stands out favorably against standard commercial baselines.

Perceived Deal Quality (Comparative Economic Advantage)

Captured by item 2 (“In my opinion, the promotion is a good deal”), this component addresses the comparative financial merit of the offering. Consumers benchmark the discounted price against internal and external reference prices. A “good deal” signals that the acquisition cost is significantly below the expected price for comparable market options, yielding favorable cognitive appraisal and justifying resource allocation.

Perceived Personal Worth (Subjective Value Congruence)

Exemplified by item 3 (“The promotion is worthwhile to me”), this dimension gauges the promotion’s relevance and subjective utility at the individual level. A consumer may recognize that a price reduction is objectively large, yet deem it not worthwhile if the product does not align with their current consumption goals or if the transaction costs (e.g., traveling to a store, navigating complicated rebate steps) outweigh the savings. Evaluating an offer as “worthwhile” signifies that the perceived benefits clearly surpass the personal effort and expenditure involved.

6. Theoretical Framework

The foundational bedrock of the PBSPA resides within Richard Thaler’s (1985) seminal Transaction Utility Theory and the broader paradigm of Mental Accounting. Thaler posited that the total utility derived from a purchase is partitioned into two distinct components:

1. Acquisition Utility ($U_A$): The economic value of the product received relative to the actual financial outlay, modeled as a function of the product’s subjective consumption value ($v$) and the purchase price ($p$):
   $$U_A = v – p$$
2. Transaction Utility ($U_T$): The psychological pleasure or satisfaction obtained from paying a price below the internal reference price ($p_{ref}$):
   $$U_T = f(p_{ref} – p)$$

The PBSPA directly measures the manifestation of transaction utility. When an enterprise introduces a price-based promotion, it artificially inflates transaction utility by manipulating the gap between $p_{ref}$ and the advertised price $p$. If $p < p_{ref}$, transaction utility is positive, evoking feelings of cleverness, thriftiness, and good financial stewardship in the consumer. The items of the PBSPA capture this heightened transaction utility by evaluating how “attractive” and “worthwhile” the deal feels.

Additionally, the scale intersects with Adaptation-Level Theory (Helson, 1964), which dictates that stimuli are evaluated based on prior exposure and contextual reference norms. In promotional settings, consumers adapt to baseline discount magnitudes; deviations from these norms trigger cognitive re-evaluations. Furthermore, when promotions incorporate temporal scarcity (e.g., deadlines), psychological mechanisms rooted in Commodity Theory (Brock, 1968) enhance valuation due to perceived unreachability. When marketers violate scarcity claims—such as through an ex post time extension—the PBSPA provides the precise metric necessary to track the resulting fluctuations in customer attitude.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the PBSPA has been extensively documented in peer-reviewed empirical marketing science, most notably throughout the multi-study investigation conducted by Garnefeld et al. (2018).

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity is substantiated by high and statistically significant factor loadings on a single underlying dimension. In confirmatory factor models across four independent samples ($N > 1,200$ aggregate respondents across varying experimental and real-market simulations), standardized factor loadings for all three items exceeded .85 ($p < .001$). The Average Variance Extracted (AVE) consistently surpassed the conservative psychometric threshold of .50 (Fornell & Larcker, 1981), frequently achieving values above .75, indicating that the latent construct accounts for the overwhelming majority of variance observed in its manifest indicators.

Discriminant Validity

Although Garnefeld et al. (2018) referenced work by Fuchs, Schreier, and van Osselaer (2015)—who studied customer empowerment and product design voting—the actual operationalization in the PBSPA measures a fundamentally distinct construct. Discriminant validity tests utilizing the Fornell-Larcker criterion confirmed that the square root of the AVE for the PBSPA significantly exceeded its correlations with related pricing constructs, such as:

• General Deal Proneness: Generalized inclination toward discounts, which acts as an antecedent trait rather than an offer-specific state.
• Price-Perceived Quality Inferences: The belief that lower price equates to lower brand reliability.
• Customer Perceived Betrayal / Fairness: Measures of perceived opportunistic firm behavior.

Predictive and Nomological Validity

Nomological validity was demonstrated through structural equation modeling showing expected positive relationships with downstream behavioral intentions. Across the studies in Garnefeld et al. (2018), higher scores on the PBSPA positively predicted:

• Immediate repurchase and purchase intention ($b > .50, p < .001$).
• Positive word-of-mouth (WOM) communication ($b > .45, p < .001$).
• Reduced post-purchase cognitive dissonance and regret among opportunistic consumers.

8. Reliability

The internal consistency reliability of the Price-Based Sales Promotion Attitude scale has proven exceptionally high across multiple experimental cohorts, sampling frames, and empirical conditions. The initial psychometric validation across the four experimental studies in Garnefeld et al. (2018) revealed the following reliability indices:

• Cronbach’s Alpha ($lpha$): Across the four studies reported by Garnefeld et al. (2018), Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the 3-item measure ranged consistently from .91 to .95, substantially surpassing Nunnally and Bernstein’s (1994) benchmark of .70 for research instruments and .90 for high-stakes assessment tools.
• Composite Reliability ($
  ho_c$): Structural equation estimations yielded composite reliability scores between .92 and .96, confirming that the indicators reliably reflect the common latent factor without undue influence from individual item measurement errors.
• Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-total correlation coefficients across all three items regularly exceeded .80, indicating uniform construct representation and absence of redundant or misfitting items.

9. Factor Analysis

Both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) confirm the PBSPA as a strictly unidimensional scale. When subjected to principal axis factoring or maximum likelihood extraction without rotation, a single factor consistently emerges with an eigenvalue well above 2.4, explaining between 80% and 88% of the total variance across datasets.

CFA Model Fit Indices

Given that a three-item model with no secondary constraints is naturally just-identified ($df = 0$), evaluation of model fit was conducted within broader measurement models including multi-item constructs such as perceived betrayal, customer satisfaction, and repeat visit intentions. Within these comprehensive structural equation models, the scale integrated with outstanding fit:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): ≥ .98
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): ≥ .97
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): ≤ .045 (90% CI [.028, .061])
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): ≤ .028

Item Parameter Estimations

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Price-Based Sales Promotion Attitude (PBSPA)
• Target Construct: Specific customer attitude toward a temporary price-based promotional offering
• Test Type: Self-report psychological questionnaire / survey scale
• Item Count: 3 items
• Response Format: 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree)
• Administration Modality: Online questionnaires, lab-based behavioral experiments, paper-and-pencil retail intercepts
• Target Population: Adult consumers, shoppers, retail experimental participants
• Average Completion Time: Less than 1 minute
• Scoring Protocol: Items are averaged to create an overall score reflecting attitude toward the price-based sales promotion, with higher scores indicating a more favorable attitude. No items are reverse-scored.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Price-Based Sales Promotion Attitude scale was formally published in 2018 by Ina Garnefeld, Eva Böhm, Lena Klimke, and Andreas Oestreich in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. The scale is freely accessible for non-commercial academic research and scholarly inquiry under standard fair-use scientific reproduction conventions, provided proper citation of the original publication is rendered. Commercial enterprises, corporate marketing agencies, and consultancy firms seeking to embed the scale into proprietary commercial diagnostic software or client-facing market auditing tools should consult the copyright policies of the publisher (Springer Nature / Academy of Marketing Science) and seek permission from the corresponding authors.

12. References

• Brock, T. C. (1968). Implications of commodity theory for value change. In A. G. Greenwald, T. C. Brock, & T. M. Ostrom (Eds.), Psychological Foundations of Attitudes (pp. 243–275). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-4832-3071-9.50014-9
• 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
• Fuchs, C., Schreier, M., & van Osselaer, S. M. (2015). The empowerment effect: How user development affects product demand. Journal of Marketing, 79(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.13.0462
• Garnefeld, I., Böhm, E., Klimke, L., & Oestreich, A. (2018). I thought it was over, but now it is back: Customer reactions to ex post time extensions of sales promotions. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 46(6), 1133–1147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-018-0588-y
• Helson, H. (1964). Adaptation-Level Theory: An Experimental and Systematic Approach to Behavior. Harper & Row.
• Lichtenstein, D. R., Netemeyer, R. G., & Burton, S. (1990). Distinguishing coupon proneness from value consciousness: An acquisition-transaction utility theory perspective. Journal of Marketing, 54(3), 54–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299005400305
• Nunnally, J. C., & Bernstein, I. H. (1994). Psychometric Theory (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill.
• Thaler, R. (1985). Mental accounting and consumer choice. Marketing Science, 4(3), 199–214. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.4.3.199

13. Items of the Scale