Creative consumers: awareness, attitude and action

Purpose – This paper aims to report on the construction of a scale to measure a firm's stance towards creative consumers; that is, customers who adapt, modify or transform a proprietary offering. Design/methodology/approach – A measurement instrument, called the 3As, is developed to assess the extent to which an organization is aware of its creative customers, its attitude towards its creative customers, and finally the action it takes in response to its creative customers. A total of 178 Executive MBA students were used to fine‐tune a set of items using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Findings – An empirical test of reliability and validity resulted in three clearly defined factors or dimensions, which correspond to the three constructs of awareness, attitude and action. The relationship between the scales' prediction of stances and a manager's self typing of the organization is assessed, and the relationship between firm stance, environmental turbulence, and performance explored. Originality/value – This paper provides the first scale for measuring a firm's stance toward creative consumers.