title: Development and empirical validation of symmetric component measures of multidimensional constructs: customer and competitor orientation.
abstract: Atheoretical measure purification may lead to construct deficient measures. The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretically driven procedure for the development and empirical validation of symmetric component measures of multidimensional constructs. Particular emphasis is placed on establishing a formalized three-step procedure for achieving a posteriori content validity. Then the procedure is applied to development and empirical validation of two symmetrical component measures of market orientation, customer orientation and competitor orientation. Analysis suggests that average variance extracted is particularly critical to reliability in the respecification of multi-indicator measures. In relation to this, the results also identify possible deficiencies in using Cronbach alpha for establishing reliable and valid measures.
authors.affiliation: Section for Strategic Organization Design, Department of Marketing and Management, University of Southern Denmark, 5230 Odense M, Denmark. hes@sam.sdu.dk
authors.forename: Hans Eibe
authors.initials: HE
authors.lastname: Sørensen
authors.forename: Stanley F
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Slater
mesh_terms: D003163:Competitive Behavior; D036262:Empirical Research; D006801:Humans; D011584:Psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires