Measuring Attitudinal Loyalty: Separating the Terms of Affective Commitment and Attitudinal Loyalty

Abstract

Current marketing research on attitudinal constructs such as commitment and loyalty is characterized by conceptual confusion and overlap. This study aims to improve the clarity of these terms by separating the commitment and loyalty constructs. It also provides a new scale for measurement of team loyalty. Commitment is a construct that is cross-sectional in nature and is internal to the individual. Alternatively, loyalty is longitudinal in nature and should be regarded as the result of interaction between negative external changes in the environment and the individual’s internal level of commitment. The proposed scale has its origins with the Psychological Commitment to Team scale. Our revisions to the scale provide the needed longitudinal dimension. The new Attitudinal Loyalty to Team Scale (ALTS), which has resistance to change as a central feature, demonstrates both reliability and validity.