Applicability of a brand trust scale across product categories

TLDR

Trust is increasingly recognized as essential for relationship marketing, yet it has rarely been explicitly studied in consumer‑brand contexts, and no existing scale measures brand trust. The study aims to develop a brand trust scale (BTS) and evaluate its psychometric equivalence across two product categories. Two studies were conducted with random consumer samples to create the BTS and assess its reliability, validity, and invariance across product categories. Results confirm the BTS’s consistency and validity, revealing two dimensions—brand reliability and brand intentions—and demonstrate invariance across the two product categories.

Abstract

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.