Scale Development

Abstract

The primary goal of scale development is to create a valid measure of an underlying construct. The scale development process of proactive customer-oriented climate and proactive customer-oriented processes follows the guidelines of Churchill (1979), Gerbing and Anderson (1988), and DeVellis (2003) and is based on the conceptualizing of the two constructs in Chapter 2.5. First I point out some limitations of existing scales and explain the need to develop new scales for climate and processes. Then the generation of an item pool is described, including a meta-analysis of in-depth studies related to proactive customer orientation, interviews and workshops with managers, and expert judgments. Based on a sample of 420 key informants from various industries, I examine reliability, validity, and generalizability of the new scales.