Measurement invariance of the modified brand luxury index scale across gender, age and countries

Abstract

Many instruments have been developed to measure the perceived luxuriousness of brands, but one of the most frequently used scales is the ‘brand luxury index’ (BLI) from Vigneron and Johnson (2004) that distinguishes between high- and low-luxury brands. Despite its popularity and widespread use in academic research, the scale’s psychometric properties and equivalence across cultures have been questioned. Recently, modified versions of the scale have been developed to strengthen the quality of the measurement. However, the performance and the measurement invariance of the modified version have not yet been investigated. The current paper aims to test the model fit of the modified BLI scale and the measurement invariance across gender, age, and country groups using nine datasets from a total of three different countries. The results of this analysis suggest that the modified BLI scale has an acceptable model fit and can be interpreted equivalently across gender and age groups. Metric invariance was found among the U.S., China, and India. However, scalar measurement invariance was established only across two countries: the U.S. and India. A follow-up analysis shows that partial scalar invariance can be established across the U.S., China, and India when removing constraints on the parameters of three items: Exclusive, Precious, Sophisticated.