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This paper coins the construct of Service Orientation (SO) and empirically develops its measurement in the context of business‐to‐business (B2B) e‐commerce. SO is operationally defined as the business' overall propensity for delivering service excellence. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that multi‐item measurement scales have sufficient psychometric properties of validity and reliability to be useful for theory building and testing.

The authors followed Menor and Roth's two‐phased approach to develop new multi‐item measurement scales. First, the authors reviewed the literature, held structured interviews with managers and performed six independent rounds of item‐sorting analyses to obtain insights for the initial measurement model specification. Second, survey research procedures were employed to develop and refine a questionnaire to collect data on a sample of senior managers of 181 US businesses that implemented B2B e‐services. The psychometric properties of the SO dimensions were confirmed using structural equations modeling.

The authors empirically confirm the nomological network of SO as a third‐order latent variable comprised of five combinative service competency bundles: service climate; market focus; process management; human resource policy; and metrics and standards. Together these bundles provide a holistic and integrative representation of the general operating environment's orientation towards customers and a business' general propensity to deliver service excellence. Importantly, the measurement structure of service orientation was found to be invariant for both goods producing and service firms.

The proposed metrics are a useful benchmarking tool for practitioners from both manufacturing and service firms to use to monitor and improve their business's SO.

The paper is believed to be the first to operationally define and measure SO in the context of B2B e‐commerce.

Firms are increasingly being pressured by the public, regulators and customers to ensure that their suppliers behave in a socially and ecologically sound manner. Yet, the complexity and risks embedded in many supply chains makes this challenging, with monitoring practices offering one means to attenuate supply sustainability risk. Drawing on agency theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between sustainability and operations risk, supplier sustainability monitoring practices, supply improvement initiatives and firm performance.

This research uses data from a survey and archival sources from a sample of large US firms to empirically examine the relationship between sustainability and operations risk, supplier sustainability monitoring practices, supply improvement initiatives and firm performance.

Findings indicate that higher levels of perceived sustainability risk is related to greater monitoring of supplier sustainability practices by focal firms. Perceptions of higher operations risk are indirectly related to greater social monitoring through investment in supply improvement initiatives. Monitoring of supplier sustainability practices is also found to have a positive effect on focal firm performance.

Findings suggest that managers process operations risks and sustainability risks independently. Greater sustainability risk leads to increased sustainability monitoring, while greater operations risk leads to increased investment in supply improvement initiatives, which in turn leads to increased social monitoring. The research also indicates that behavior-oriented approaches, such as monitoring of supplier environmental and social practices, are an effective approach to improving firm sustainability performance. However, due to resource constraints, a challenge for supply chain managers is where and when to invest in behavior-oriented approaches for suppliers.

This research advances supply risk literature by exploring the effects of supply sustainability risk on the use of monitoring practices to manage supplier environmental and social behavior. Using a combination of survey and archival data to independently assess the implications of sustainability monitoring practices on firm sustainability performance, this study provides a methodology for evaluating the impact of sustainability monitoring practices on the triple bottom line in supply chain management.

Pressured by various stakeholder groups to improve the sustainability performance of their emerging economy suppliers, multinational firms continue to expand their supplier monitoring. Leveraging the strategy literature on alliances and the buyer-supplier relationship management literature, the authors propose that a buyer firm's efforts to proactively develop cultural sensitivity and operations cognizance to understand the operational culture and routines of its suppliers can ameliorate some shortcomings of supplier monitoring, thereby improving the performance of the buyer firm.

Using primary survey data from a sample of US manufacturing firms, combined with secondary data of supplier monitoring and financial performance, this research examines the relationship between supplier monitoring, cultural sensitivity, operations cognizance, and buyer firm performance.

Supplier monitoring was associated with positive but diminishing returns for financial and sustainability performance for the buyer. Second, increasing cultural sensitivity and operations cognizance for suppliers in emerging economies were associated with improved buyer performance. Finally, the synergistic use of supplier monitoring and operations cognizance was associated with improved buyer firm financial performance.

While the buyer-supplier relationship literature has mainly treated organizational differences between dyadic supply chain partners as exogenous to the context in which their relationship evolves, the authors posit that buyer firms' efforts to understand such differences can affect the value of buyer-directed interactions, such as supplier monitoring. This research adds to the theoretical understanding of the process of developing relational mechanisms with emerging economy suppliers. In particular, efforts of buyer firms to better understand the operational culture and routines of their suppliers can complement monitoring and are associated with a positive impact on performance.

This paper aims to investigate whether verbal rating scales are viable formats for attitude measurement through an application to Japanese consumers' product quality perceptions.

The article notes theoretical differences between Likert‐based and Thurstone approaches to attitude measurement. The paper illustrates a Thurstone scale development process.

The new scale possesses nomological validity; it correctly predicts how consumer ethnocentrism relates to product quality evaluations for brands in different competitive situations.

The convenient, ready‐to‐apply verbal rating scale can measure Japanese consumers' perceptions of product quality. The article also offers survey researchers some practical guidance for developing their own verbal rating scales.

Verbal rating scales are rarely found in existing literature. This study sheds light on a frequently overlooked measurement scale format for measuring attitudes.

This paper specifies how to construct and validate an instrument based on multi‐item scales for the cataloguing and measurement of managerial and organizational capabilities on the basis of management perceptions. The construction and reduction of the scales have been reinforced by the Delphi and retesting techniques. The use of this methodology was illustrated in a sample of Spanish industrial firms. The paper enhances the value of the instruments for a resource‐based view with regard to the faithful and rigorous measurement of its key concept, distinctive competences. The scales created provide consistent empirical evidence to remove doubts surrounding managerial self‐evaluation, including those arising from problems of self‐esteem and reinforcement effects. In addition, the paper provides empirical evidence to support the predictive ability of distinctive competences on current and long‐term performance variability.

This paper provides a deeper examination of the fundamentals of commonly‐used techniques – such as coefficient alpha and factor analysis – in order to more strongly link the techniques used by marketing and social researchers to their underlying psychometric and statistical rationale.

A wide‐ranging review and synthesis of psychometric and other measurement literature both within and outside the marketing field is used to illuminate and reconsider a number of misconceptions which seem to have evolved in marketing research.

The research finds that marketing scholars have generally concentrated on reporting what are essentially arbitrary figures such as coefficient alpha, without fully understanding what these figures imply. It is argued that, if the link between theory and technique is not clearly understood, use of psychometric measure development tools actually runs the risk of detracting from the validity of the measures rather than enhancing it.

The focus on one stage of a particular form of measure development could be seen as rather specialised. The paper also runs the risk of increasing the amount of dogma surrounding measurement, which runs contrary to the spirit of this paper.

This paper shows that researchers may need to spend more time interpreting measurement results. Rather than simply referring to precedence, one needs to understand the link between measurement theory and actual technique.

This paper presents psychometric measurement and item analysis theory in easily understandable format, and offers an important set of conceptual tools for researchers in many fields.

This paper seeks to explore the complex inter‐relationships between the attitudinal and behavioural dimensions of customer loyalty development, by examining the dynamic processes by which customer loyalty is initiated and sustained using a mixed methods approach. In doing so, the paper highlights the absence of valid and reliable measures of customer loyalty development and discusses the use of the multi‐phase model of customer loyalty development.

This model is the basis for the construction of a multi‐item scale to measure customer loyalty development. A mixed methods design is specified and stages in the construction of the scale are discussed including measures of validity and reliability.

The findings of the research demonstrate the validity and reliability of the loyalty scale and highlight the sustaining and mediating effects associated with different levels of loyalty development.

The study is set within the passenger ferry sector. Future research will seek to make empirical generalisations in relation to the application of the loyalty scale.

The main implications of this research are to emphasise the importance of sustaining and developing customer loyalty based on a differentiated approach to rewarding customers who have different levels of loyalty development. The findings highlighted the need to acknowledge the importance of reciprocity in terms of which aspects of service customers value within different levels of loyalty.

The main contributions of this paper are the presentation of the loyalty scale and the confirmation of the plateau of customer loyalty development.

Looks at the generality and reliability of multi‐item measures that are based upon the perception of one or more individuals. Proposes that at least an overall time aspect is missing, which would contribute to the measurement of the perceived direction of change in a specific empirical context. The issues raised in current marketing research literature on the use of multi‐item measures relate to the generality and reliability of the findings regarding time and space. Emphasises the limits of the issues of time. The characteristics of data collected using a particular multi‐item measurement scale determine the reliability of the findings. Determines, by a methodological procedure, the generality of the empirical outcome. The results may lack reliability and generality over time even if the same items of measurement are used in the same context. Therefore, introduces an overall trend dimension in multi‐item measures in order to incorporate the time aspect for each dimension in a construct. The trend dimension makes it possible to measure the perceived direction of change, and complements the facets, as well as the perceptual degree, of a phenomenon or object in a specific empirical context.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the use of measurement scales and to illustrate some of the drawbacks of using scales for measuring service quality without due recognition of the limitations and rigidity of such scales, especially when they are applied to the complexity of service marketing situations and contexts.

A review of the most widely used scales in services measurement, including SERVQUAL and SERVPERF is provided, along with some of the conceptual issues surrounding scale design and use in service contexts. Then some qualitative research techniques are considered in terms of their adaptability and flexibility for carrying out research regarding the complex nature of services.

Measurement scales are evaluated and discussed. The key criticisms of best‐known scales used for services situations are presented. Then consideration is given to what might be a “best practice” scenario for measuring and assessing service‐related issues in a service context.

The discussion draws attention to the importance of recognising the most suitable research method for a service‐specific research problem/question rather than imposing a well known measurement scale or technique that may not suit the purpose.

The contemporary interest in customer loyalty has resulted in a proliferation of multi‐item scales containing an aggregated mix of items that appears to reflect different aspects of loyalty. The most common application of this aggregation approach is to include two specific loyalty facets, repatronage intentions and word‐of‐mouth intentions, in the same loyalty measure and to proceed as if they reflect the same underlying construct. The purpose of this paper is to examine – and question – this practice in conceptual, methodological, and empirical terms.

Two empirical studies in service settings were conducted and multi‐item measures were used to collect data on repatronage intentions, word‐of‐mouth intentions, and satisfaction. A structural equation model approach was used to compare an aggregated measurement approach with an approach which models the two loyalty constructs as two separate factors.

The results indicate that repatronage intentions and word‐of‐mouth intentions can indeed be seen as two discrete constructs.

The results indicate that caution is called for when the investigator is measuring customer loyalty with multi‐item measures. Indeed, the lumping together of such facets as repatronage intentions and word‐of‐mouth intentions is likely to conceal significant aspects of loyalty per se and its relation to other variables in the nomological net.

Only a very limited number of existing studies measure customer loyalty with multi‐item scales and with an explicit assumption that several discrete facets of loyalty exist.