Executive Summary
Surveys play a crucial role in marketing research. A frequently noted concern with self-reports collected through surveys is that respondents may not respond truthfully but simply provide answers that make them look good. This phenomenon is called socially desirable responding (SDR). The SDR phenomenon introduces extraneous variation in scale scores and compromises the validity of marketing survey data. Consequently, SDR has been called “one of the most pervasive response biases” in survey data.
Despite the generally recognized importance of SDR in survey research, it has attracted relatively little attention in marketing. Response biases, including SDR, are sometimes mentioned in scale development studies, but usually researchers simply report a correlation between the substantive construct of interest and an SDR scale and either conclude that SDR is not a problem (if the correlation is nonsignificant) or claim that SDR is not a serious issue (if the correlation is relatively small).
In recent years, SDR has been an area of active research, especially in psychology, and this work has led to important new insights, which call into doubt theories and practices that are still considered standard in marketing. A review of the marketing literature leads the authors to identify at least four common misconceptions: (1) SDR can be validly conceptualized as a unidimensional construct, (2) any of the SDR scales available in the literature can be used to assess SDR because they all measure the same construct, (3) the goal is to avoid a significant correlation between substantive constructs and SDR scales because such an association always implies contamination, and (4) the biasing influence of SDR can be removed simply by including a measure of SDR as a control variable.
Consequently, the aim of this article is twofold: (1) to update marketing researchers on the latest thinking in SDR research and (2) to reinforce and extend what is known based on an unusually large international data set involving 12,424 nationally representative respondents in 26 countries on four continents. The article is organized around three key issues that are important for an improved understanding and treatment of SDR in marketing survey research. First, the authors consider the SDR construct and its measurement. Second, they examine the nomological constellation of personality traits, values, sociodemographics, and cultural factors associated with SDR. As with any other behavioral construct, SDR does not exist in isolation but rather derives much of its meaning from the theoretical constellation of related constructs. Third, the authors discuss the vexing issue of whether respondents’ ratings on SDR scales represent substance or style and how researchers should interpret an association of SDR with a substantive marketing construct. Each issue is discussed in a separate section, in which the authors first provide a review of the literature and identify unresolved issues and then report new empirical evidence based on their global study. The article concludes with guidelines for the field and suggestions for further research.
Biography
Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp is C. Knox Massey Distinguished Professor of Marketing and Marketing Area Chair in the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His work has been published in journals such as Academy of Management Journal, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Marketing Science. He also serves on the editorial boards of International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Marketing Science and has been editor of International Journal of Research in Marketing. His most recent book is Private Label Strategy: How to Meet the Store Brand Challenge (with Nirmalya Kumar), published in 2007 by Harvard Business School Press. More than 13,000 copies have already been sold, and it has already been translated into Chinese and Portuguese. He has won the Hendrik Muller lifetime award for the social and behavioral sciences awarded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences for “exceptional achievements in the area of the behavioral and social sciences” (the first time the prize has been awarded to a researcher in any area of business administration). He has also received the O’Dell, Little, Bass, and International Journal of Research in Marketing best-article awards, as well as the AMA Global Marketing Special Interest Group Excellence in Research Award (twice). His current research focuses on private labels and branding, global marketing, and international marketing research techniques.
Martijn de Jong (PhD, Tilburg University) is Associate Professor of Marketing in the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University. He received Tilburg University’s 2006–2007 dissertation prize. His main research interests lie in the areas of cross-national measurement, validity of survey research, preference measurement, and Bayesian inference. His work has been published in Journal of Consumer Research, Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, and Quantitative Marketing & Economics.
Hans Baumgartner (PhD, Stanford University) is Professor of Marketing, Charles & Lillian Binder Faculty Fellow, and Chair of the Marketing Department in the Smeal College of Business at the Pennsylvania State University. His research interests are in the areas of consumer behavior and research methodology. He has published articles on these topics in Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Psychology, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Journal of Economic Literature, among others. He is a past associate editor of the Journal of Consumer Research and currently serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal für Betriebswirtschaft, Die Betriebswirtschaft, and Marketing: Journal of Research and Management. He will be the president of the Society for Consumer Psychology during 2009–2010.
Journal of Marketing Research, Volume 47, Number 2, April 2010
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