Development of Brand-Discrimination Test by Item Response Theory

Abstract

In this study, we constructed a brand-discrimination test which consisted of twenty-eight items. This test is designed to measure levels of a trait that participants can discriminate a product of a particular brand from among products of others. We chose MUJI, which is a well-known retail brand across the world, as the brand. There were four steps to construct the test. First, one hundred and one items which have four choices were developed and a survey with three hundred and seven participants who at least know MUJI was conducted in order to examine effectiveness of the items. Next, seventy-three items were excluded after item analysis and verifications of unidimensionality. And then, item response theory analyses were performed to the remaining the twenty-eight items and their parameters of slope(discrimination) and location(difficulty) were calculated. Finally, test information curve and test characteristic curve for the test were estimated in order to confirm characteristics of the test.