Applicability of a brand trust scale across product categories

Despite increased attention and relevance drawn by trust as a key characteristic required for relationship marketing success, it has seldom been explicitly examined in end‐consumer studies, especially those concerning consumer‐brand domain. Consequently, no current scale exists to measure trust in a brand setting. This research presents the results of two studies conducted to develop a scale to measure brand trust, which is called brand trust scale (BTS), and analyse the equivalence of its psychometric characteristics when the scale is used in two different product categories. The findings derived from two random samples of consumers give empirical support for the consistency and validity of the scale developed, and the distinction of two main dimensions on the concept: brand reliability and brand intentions. The results also provide empirical evidence of the scale invariance, meaning that consumers of two different products interpreted brand trust in the same way.

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