Effects of extreme anchors and interior label spacing on labeled affective magnitude scales

Three experiments were conducted to examine the effect of the choice of words for the high and low extreme verbal labels for labeled affective magnitude scales (LAM). In the first study, anchors included greatest imaginable like (or dislike) for experiences of any kind and for a fruit beverage. Anchoring the scale to any experience created a compression effect, restricting the range of the scale that was used. However, both versions of the LAM showed equal discrimination of the acceptance ratings of products in a set of five diverse fruit juice beverages. A second study was conducted to examine the scale positions of various high end anchors, including greatest imaginable like (dislike), greatest imaginable liking for foods, beverages and any experience. Using magnitude estimation, more extreme ratings were found for the liking (or disliking) of any experience as opposed to simply greatest imaginable liking (or disliking) and less extreme ratings for anchoring to foods and beverages. The resulting scale values were used to compare three versions of the LAM, with different end anchors and spacings of the interior nine-point hedonic scale labels. As in the first experiment, the range of scores decreased when the end anchor term included experiences of any kind and also when the spacing of the interior hedonic terms was compressed. However, once again the products were differentiated equally well in acceptance scores by all three versions of the scale. With the product set studied here, there is no apparent advantage to the use of an extreme anchor term referring to experiences of any kind and use of such an anchor may compress the range of scale values chosen by consumer panelists. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.