Marketing Levels of Scales Summary

When working with marketing research you may come across the concept of the four “levels of scales”, or “levels of measurement”. All measurements collected by the three marketing instruments: questionnaires, qualitative measures and technological devices will measured by one of these forms of data.

The four levels of scales are:

• Nominal
• Ordinal
• Interval
• Ratio

Nominal

This is where you provide a list of categories or items and ask which of these items do you use/purchase/value. At the end of the survey you get a count of the number of people that selected each of the options.

For example:

Mark which of the following fruit you purchase regularly

( x ) Apples, ( x ) Pears, ( ) Apricots, ( x ) Bananas

Ordinal

This Is where you ask for items to be ranked in order of the characteristic being surveyed.

For example:

Rank the following fruit in order of preference (1-4):

( 2 ) Apples, ( 3 ) Pears, ( 4 ) Apricots, ( 1 ) Bananas

Interval

This is where you ask for a particular characteristic to be rated, either numerically (1-5) or semantically (Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor).

For example:

On a scale of 1-5 how would you rate the following qualities of our Apples:

Crunch ……… 1 2 3 4 5

Colour ……… 1 2 3 4 5

Taste ………. 1 2 3 4 5

Ratio

This is like the interval scale, except that there is an origin or zero property, such as measuring time, height, or weight.

For example:

How long did it take you to read this blog post?

( ) 1 minutes ( x ) 2 minutes ( ) 3 minutes ( ) 4 minutes ( ) 5 minutes

So that is the Marketing Levels of Scales, also known as the Levels of Measurement. Hopefully you’ve found this page useful. Any questions or comments, let me know below.