Applying the future time perspective scale to advertising research

Abstract

As a central element of the socioemotional selectivity theory, individuals’ future time perspective (FTP) has recently attracted considerable attention in marketing. Lang and Carstensen (2002) provide a measurement scale for FTP, which has since been used by many academic researchers who univocally accept its original unidimensional reflective operationalisation. Challenging this assumption, we draw on data from three studies to systematically explore the scale’s psychometric properties. We find that the FTP scale comprises three dimensions rather than one. In a second step, the nature of the relationships between these dimensions and the more abstract higher-order FTP construct, as well as between the dimensions and their items, is explored. Our assessment of the scale’s predictive validity shows that the unidimensional operationalisation misleads researchers because dimension-specific effects become confounded in a composite effect. As such, this study takes a step towards advancing the FTP’s measurement and understanding its role in different research settings.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Volker G. Kuppelwieser

Volker G. Kuppelwieser is an Associate Professor in Marketing at the NEOMA Business School (France). His main research interests are group services, organisational service behavior and individual age perceptions in services. He previously held several positions in the service industry and has 12 years’ experience of industry. He has published in journals such as Marketing Letters, Human Relations, Journal of Strategic Marketing, Managing Service Quality and Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, amongst others. He has also given numerous conference presentations and serves as a reviewer for several marketing and organisational behaviour journals.

Marko Sarstedt

Marko Sarstedt is Professor of Marketing at the Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg (Germany) and Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Business and Law of the University of Newcastle (Australia). His main research interest is in the advancement of research methods to further the understanding of consumer behaviour. His research has been published in top-tier journals such as Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, MIS Quarterly and Journal of World Business. According to the 2012 Handelsblatt ranking, Dr Sarstedt is among the top five marketing researchers younger than the age of 40 in Germany.