10.1177/0092070303254130 OTHER JOURNAL OF THE ACADEMY OF MARKETING SCIENCE SUMMER 2003 MacKenzie / POOR CONSTRUCT CONCEPTUALIZATION The Dangers of Poor Construct Conceptualization Scott B. MacKenzie Indiana University For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of the shoe, the horse was lost. For want of the horse, the rider was lost. For want of the rider, the battle was lost. For want of the battle, the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a nail. In some respects, this nursery rhyme summarizes the point of my brief essay on what I believe is one of the major problems in the manuscripts I review. Only instead of a missing nail, the problem is poor construct conceptualiza- tion. I chose this issue because it is one that has serious consequences for the validity of research in the discipline, but it is something that authors tend to overlook. As noted by Cook and Campbell (1979), there are four main questions that should be considered when evaluating the validity of a study’s findings. First, what are the partic- ular cause-and-effect constructs involved? This is a ques- tion of construct validity . Second, is there a relationship between the presumed cause and effect? This question relates to statistical conclusion validity . Third, is the rela- tionship causal? This question addresses the internal validity of the research and concerns whether the condi- tions for establishing causal priority of the causal variable over the effect variable have been established and whether the design of the study renders any rival explanations of the observed effect implausible. Fourth, how generalizable is this relationship across persons, settings, and times? Here the focus is on external validity . Even though all four types of validity are important, and indeed essential, authors often give far more attention to some of these questions than to others. Most authors give a great deal of consideration to questions of internal and external validity (as they should), but far less to issues related to construct and statistical conclusion validity. However, as a reviewer, I often find that poor construct and statistical conclusion validity can make any thoughts of internal or external validity a fantasy. In my experience, the most common cause of this disappointing state of affairs is the failure to adequately specify the conceptual meaning of the study’s focal constructs. This fundamental problem triggers a sequence of events (see Figure 1) that undermines construct validity (primarily due to measure deficiency), statistical conclusion validity (due to the bias- ing effects of measurement model misspecification), and ultimately internal validity (due to a combination of factors). VICIOUS CYCLE THAT CAUSES THE PROBLEM The downward spiral for many manuscripts begins with the failure to adequately define the focal construct(s) of the study. A considerable number of pages in the front end of most manuscripts are devoted to thoroughly review- ing the diverse, and often conflicting, conceptualizations of the focal construct(s) found in the research literature. In many instances, what emerges from this review is a rich— but not altogether clear—sense of the conceptual meaning of the focal construct(s). At this point, successful authors will wrestle with these difficult conceptual issues and attempt to synthesize the alternative conceptualizations. However, too many authors abdicate their responsibility to do this and instead move on to their discussion of the hypotheses. As a result, they never develop a clear, concise conceptual definition of the focal construct(s). This funda- mental failure produces a series of subsequent problems. First, because the focal construct was never adequately defined, it is difficult to develop measures that faithfully represent its domain. Researchers use multiple measures of constructs to (a) better capture the full domain of com- plex constructs (Churchill 1979), (b) unconfound the method of measurement from the construct of interest (Campbell and Fiske 1959), and (c) enhance the reliability Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. Volume 31, No. 3, pages 323-326. DOI: 10.1177/0092070303254130 Copyright © 2003 by Academy of Marketing Science.