Private Label Brand Attitude (PLBA)

Abstract

The Private Label Brand Attitude (PLBA) scale, developed by marketing and psychometric scholars Scot Burton, Donald R. Lichtenstein, Richard G. Netemeyer, and Judith A. Garretson in 1998, is a unidimensional psychometric instrument designed to evaluate consumers' generalized predispositions toward private label (store brand) packaged goods. Comprising six items measured along a 7-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree, the PLBA assesses consumer perceptions across core cognitive and affective domains, including perceived value-for-money, parity quality with national brand alternatives, and behavioral readiness to choose retailer-owned brands across heterogeneous consumer packaged goods (CPG) product categories. Developed across rigorous multistage empirical studies involving thousands of adult consumers, the scale exhibits high internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach's alpha coefficients typically exceeding .88 to .93 and test-retest reliability demonstrating robust longitudinal stability. Confirmatory factor analyses across diverse retail samples substantiate a unidimensional factor structure characterized by strong standardized factor loadings (.72 to .91) and favorable goodness-of-fit parameters (CFI > .97, RMSEA < .06). Extensive construct validation establishes the instrument's convergent validity with general deal proneness, smart shopper self-perceptions, and value consciousness, as well as discriminant validity against national brand loyalty and retail chain-specific attitudes. Predictive validity is demonstrated through significant correlations with actual market basket allocations, self-reported store brand purchase volume, and scanner-based checkout receipts. As retailers worldwide continue to expand tiers of private label products—from generic economy lines to premium tier offerings—the PLBA remains a foundational instrument in consumer behavior, commercial retailing, and behavioral decision research.

Keywords

Private Label Brand Attitude, PLBA, Store Brand Attitude, Consumer Behavior, Psychometrics, Scale Development, Value Consciousness, Perceived Quality, Retail Management, Brand Equity

Authors

The scale was developed and validated through a collaboration of distinguished marketing researchers:

• Scot Burton, Ph.D. — Distinguished Professor and Tyson Chair in Food and Consumer Products Retailing, Department of Marketing, Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, United States.
• Donald R. Lichtenstein, Ph.D. — Professor Emeritus of Marketing, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, United States.
• Richard G. Netemeyer, Ph.D. — Ralph A. Beeton Professor of Free Enterprise, Department of Marketing, McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States.
• Judith A. Garretson Folse, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas (formerly at Louisiana State University), United States.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Private Label Brand Attitude (PLBA) scale is to measure an enduring, generalized psychological predisposition toward store-owned brands across multiple grocery and non-food product categories. Prior to the formulation of this scale by Burton and colleagues in 1998, retail management literature frequently conflated consumers' attitudes toward individual store brands (e.g., a specific supermarket's dairy label) with their macroeconomic or general evaluation of private labels as a product class. Furthermore, earlier measurement protocols often treated store brand patronage purely as an opportunistic response to price differentials or as an undifferentiated subtype of general coupon and deal proneness. The development of the PLBA addressed this theoretical and empirical void by isolating a stable, domain-specific attitude construct grounded in cognitive psychology and consumer behavior.

In research contexts, the PLBA serves several essential functions:

• Explanatory Power in Choice Modeling: It acts as an antecedent variable within discrete choice models, structural equation models, and structural econometric specifications seeking to explain market-share distribution between manufacturer (national) brands and private distributor brands.
• Segmentation and Psychographic Profiling: Researchers use the scale to segment consumer populations into distinct cohorts—such as store brand advocates, value optimizers, risk-averse brand loyalists, and quality skeptics—allowing academic investigations into how personality traits interact with marketing stimuli.
• Longitudinal Attitude Tracking: The scale enables scholars to trace shifts in consumer brand perceptions during macroeconomic cycles, such as inflationary periods, supply chain shocks, or economic downturns, identifying whether heightened private label trial leads to durable attitudinal transformation or temporary behavioral switching.

In applied retail management and commercial analytics, the PLBA provides store operators and brand managers with an empirically validated diagnostic tool. Category managers utilize the scale to gauge customer acceptance of private label expansion into riskier product categories, such as baby care, personal hygiene, and pharmaceuticals, where perceived functional or health risks traditionally hinder non-national brand adoption. Similarly, national brand manufacturers employ the instrument in defensive strategy formulations to quantify consumer vulnerability to private label substitution within competitive assortments.

Psychological Construct

The Private Label Brand Attitude construct is conceptualized as a global, enduring evaluative disposition toward private label products in general, rather than toward a single retailer's proprietary brand or a single product category. Grounded in the tripartite model of attitudes—incorporating cognitive, affective, and behavioral tendencies—the construct integrates three interrelated psychological dimensions under a single higher-order unidimensional architecture:

1. Perceptions of Value and Economic Equity

This facet assesses consumer cognitive assessments of the price-to-quality ratio offered by store brands. It captures the consumer's internal conviction that private label products offer an advantageous economic exchange without exacting unacceptable performance penalties. Rather than perceiving low prices as an indicator of inferior craftsmanship or deficient formulation, consumers with high PLBA evaluate store brand pricing as a reflection of distribution efficiencies, lower marketing overhead, and retailer disintermediation. The subjective appraisal that private label purchases represent a "good deal" reinforces the consumer's self-concept as a competent, economically rational market actor.

2. Quality Parity and Performance Beliefs

The second psychological pillar involves cognitive judgments regarding the functional equivalence of private label products relative to prominent national brand competitors. Historically, consumer reluctance toward store brands stemmed from perceived functional, physical, and social risk—beliefs that ingredients were substandard, manufacturing standards less stringent, or packaging visually stigmatizing. The PLBA captures the attenuation of this perceived performance gap, measuring the belief that store brands match national brands in taste, efficacy, safety, and reliability across product categories.

3. Affective Affinity and Behavioral Readiness

Beyond rational cost-benefit calculations, the construct encompasses positive affective states and generalized behavioral preferences associated with private label consumption. Items evaluate the emotional satisfaction, gratification, and positive mood induced when choosing store brands over manufacturer brands. Consumers scoring high on this dimension experience intrinsic satisfaction from bypassing branded marketing premiums, manifesting an overt preference for retail environments that maintain robust, diverse private label inventories.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the PLBA scale integrates several core paradigms from cognitive psychology, social psychology, and consumer decision theory:

The Theory of Reasoned Action and Planned Behavior

Rooted in the seminal works of Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen (Theory of Reasoned Action and Theory of Planned Behavior), attitudes are conceptualized as predispositions to respond consistently in a favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a given object. According to this framework, an individual's generalized attitude toward private labels ($A_{PL}$) directly shapes behavioral intentions ($BI$), which in turn govern overt purchasing behaviors ($B$). Fishbein's multiattribute attitude model posits that an attitude is a function of salient beliefs regarding an object's attributes weighted by the evaluative aspect of those attributes:

A_o = ∑ (b_i × e_i)

Where b_i represents the subjective probability that private labels possess attribute i (e.g., adequate quality, low price), and e_i represents the consumer's affective evaluation of attribute i. The PLBA captures this cumulative evaluative structure across multiple product categories.

Zeithaml's Means-End Chain and Perceived Value Model

Valarie Zeithaml's (1988) seminal model of Price, Perceived Quality, and Perceived Value serves as a foundational cognitive pillar for the PLBA. Zeithaml defined perceived value as the consumer's overall assessment of the utility of a product based on perceptions of what is received (benefits, quality) versus what is given (monetary price, non-monetary effort). Private label attitudes develop through cognitive integration along this means-end chain, where consumers transition from concrete extrinsic cues (retailer name, shelf-tag price) to abstract judgments of functional quality and, ultimately, to subjective value satisfaction.

Information Economics and Signaling Theory

According to Signaling Theory (Spence, 1973; Kirmani & Rao, 2000), brand names serve as informative signals that mitigate information asymmetry between manufacturers and consumers regarding unobservable product quality. National brands invest heavily in advertising to establish credible quality signals. Consumers possessing low PLBA view the absence of massive national advertising as a signal of high performance risk. Conversely, consumers with high PLBA reframe retail store reputation as an alternative, highly credible quality warranty, reducing perceived search costs and economic risk.

Validity

The PLBA scale was subjected to rigorous psychometric scrutiny during its original development and in subsequent empirical replications across North American, European, and Asian retail environments.

Content and Face Validity

Item generation commenced with an initial pool of candidate items extracted from exhaustive literature reviews and exploratory consumer interviews. A panel of academic experts in psychometrics and marketing evaluated the candidate items for theoretical alignment, readability, and redundant phrasing. Items demonstrating ambiguity or excessive category-specific framing were purged, leaving a distilled set of items that directly operationalized generalized private label evaluations.

Convergent Validity

Burton et al. (1998) established convergent validity by correlating PLBA scores with theoretically linked consumer personality and shopping trait constructs:

• Value Consciousness: Consistently displayed moderate-to-strong positive correlations (r = .42 to .56, p < .001), indicating that consumers who deliberately maximize the ratio of quality to price align closely with store brand adoption.
• Price Consciousness: Positively correlated with PLBA (r = .38 to .49, p < .001), confirming that price sensitivity motivates store brand evaluations.
• Smart Shopper Self-Perception: Exhibited significant positive associations (r = .35 to .48, p < .001), demonstrating that purchasing private labels contributes to consumers' internal feelings of retail mastery and financial shrewdness.
• Sale and Deal Proneness: Showed positive, statistically significant associations (r = .28 to .41, p < .01).

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established via average variance extracted (AVE) comparisons and nested confirmatory factor analysis models:

• Brand Loyalty (National Brands): Showed a strong inverse relationship (r = -.39 to -.52, p < .001), demonstrating distinct construct separation between manufacturer brand commitment and private label openness.
• Store Loyalty: Showed weak to moderate correlations (r = .14 to .24), proving that positive attitudes toward private labels in general do not merely reflect affection for a specific grocery chain or retail outlet.
• AVE vs. Shared Variance: The AVE for the single-factor PLBA model exceeded .65 across validation samples, surpassing the squared phi-correlations between PLBA and all neighboring psychographic constructs, fulfilling the Fornell-Larcker criterion for discriminant validity.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

The scale demonstrates exemplary predictive validity across diverse behavioral criteria:

• Self-Reported Market Basket Share: Regressions modeling the percentage of private label products in grocery carts indicated that PLBA accounts for substantial incremental variance (ΔR² = .18 to .29, p < .001) beyond basic demographic variables.
• Objective Scanner Checkout Data: Empirical tracking linking survey responses to household scanner panel records confirmed that consumers with top-quartile PLBA scores purchased store brands at more than double the volume of consumers in the bottom quartile across both commodity categories (e.g., flour, milk) and complex packaged categories (e.g., personal care, prepared frozen meals).

Reliability

The reliability of the PLBA has been substantiated across independent investigations spanning commercial marketing research and academic psychometrics:

Internal Consistency

• Original Scale Validation (Burton et al., 1998): The six-item instrument yielded Cronbach's alpha coefficients between .88 and .93 across initial scale development samples, student test groups, and nationwide adult consumer surveys.
• Subsequent Replications: Subsequent cross-national studies have continuously reported composite reliability (CR) and Cronbach's alpha indices ranging from .87 to .94 across diverse retail contexts in the United States, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, and South Korea.
• Average Variance Extracted (AVE): AVE metrics consistently surpass .60 (typically ranging from .62 to .74), demonstrating that the majority of observed variance is attributable to the underlying latent construct rather than measurement error.

Test-Retest Reliability

In stability assessments conducted over three- to six-week test-retest intervals with independent consumer panels, the temporal stability coefficient (r_tt) reached .82 to .86 (p < .001). This demonstrates that the PLBA captures an enduring evaluative attitude rather than transient, state-dependent shopping mood states.

Factor Analysis

The underlying dimensionality of the PLBA scale was investigated using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) procedures throughout its development stages.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial principal components and maximum likelihood factor extractions with unrotated and orthogonal (Varimax) rotations demonstrated a clear single-factor solution. Eigenvalue analysis revealed a single primary factor exhibiting an eigenvalue well above Kaiser's criterion (λ > 3.8), accounting for 64% to 73% of the total variance across candidate items. Subsequent scree plot inspections demonstrated an unequivocal single "elbow," ruling out multidimensionality.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Subsequent structural equation modeling across validation samples confirmed that a unidimensional congeneric model exhibited superior fit without the necessity of post-hoc correlated error parameters:

• Chi-Square / Degrees of Freedom: χ² / df ratios consistently ranged between 1.45 and 2.30, indicating excellent model parsimony.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Ranged from .97 to .99, surpassing Hu and Bentler's rigorous .95 threshold.
• Goodness-of-Fit Index (GFI): Exhibited values between .96 and .98.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Point estimates ranged from .038 to .058, with 90% confidence intervals remaining safely below the .08 upper cutoff.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Maintained between .024 and .036.

Item Indicator	Latent Dimension Description	Standardized Loading (λ)	Error Variance (θδ)
Item 1	Affective shopping satisfaction	.78 – .84	.29 – .39
Item 2	Assortment availability preference	.72 – .80	.36 – .48
Item 3	Best-buy economic optimization	.84 – .90	.19 – .29
Item 4	Value-for-money comparative preference	.86 – .91	.17 – .26
Item 5	Deal-getting perception	.81 – .87	.24 – .34
Item 6	Quality parity with national brands	.74 – .82	.33 – .45

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Private Label Brand Attitude (PLBA) Scale
• Primary Construct: Generalized attitude toward retail store brands / private label consumer goods
• Structural Nature: Unidimensional self-report rating inventory
• Item Count: 6 items
• Response Format: 7-point Likert-type scale
• Anchor Labels:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Somewhat Disagree
  • 4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree (Neutral)
  • 5 = Somewhat Agree
  • 6 = Agree
  • 7 = Strongly Agree
• Item Keying / Coding: All 6 items are positively keyed (worded in favor of private label brands); no reverse-scoring is required.
• Scoring Administration:
  • Summed Composite Score: Sum across all 6 items yields a range from 6 to 42.
  • Mean Composite Score: Sum divided by 6 yields an interpretable metric from 1.00 to 7.00.
  • Score Interpretation: Higher mean scores (> 4.50) indicate highly favorable attitudes toward private labels, marked by strong value-for-money perceptions and low perceived functional risk; lower scores (< 3.50) indicate skepticism of store brands and pronounced allegiance to national manufacturer brands.
• Target Population: Adult consumers (18+), primary grocery shoppers, and general retail patrons.
• Estimated Completion Time: Approximately 2 to 3 minutes.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Private Label Brand Attitude (PLBA) scale was developed and published in 1998. As an academic psychometric measurement tool published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (Burton et al., 1998), the scale is widely accessible in the public domain for academic, educational, and non-commercial research purposes, subject to standard scholarly attribution and citation of the foundational work. No licensing fees or royalty payments are charged to independent researchers using the scale in educational, thesis, or peer-reviewed empirical investigations. Commercial entities, market research firms, or enterprise software vendors embedding the scale into proprietary commercial analytics platforms should reference the copyright guidelines established by the publisher (Springer Nature / Academy of Marketing Science) or consult the original authors regarding proprietary implementations.

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
• Burton, S., Lichtenstein, D. R., Netemeyer, R. G., & Garretson, J. A. (1998). A scale for measuring attitude toward private label products and an examination of its psychological and behavioral correlates. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 26(4), 293–306. https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070398264002
• Fishbein, M., & Ajzen, I. (1975). Belief, attitude, intention, and behavior: An introduction to theory and research. Addison-Wesley.
• Garretson, J. A., Fisher, D., & Burton, S. (2002). Antecedents of private label attitude and national brand promotion attitude: Similarities and differences. Journal of Retailing, 78(2), 91–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-4359(02)00071-4
• Kirmani, A., & Rao, A. R. (2000). No pain, no gain: A critical review of the literature on signaling unobservable product quality. Journal of Marketing, 64(2), 66–79. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.64.2.66.18000
• Lichtenstein, D. R., Ridgway, N. M., & Netemeyer, R. G. (1993). Price perceptions and consumer shopping behavior: A field study. Journal of Marketing Research, 30(2), 234–245. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224379303000208
• Netemeyer, R. G., Bearden, W. O., & Sharma, S. (2003). Scaling procedures: Issues and applications. SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412985772
• Zeithaml, V. A. (1988). Consumer perceptions of price, quality, and value: A means-end model and synthesis of evidence. Journal of Marketing, 52(3), 2–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224298805200302

Items of the Scale