1. ¹Department of Business Administration, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
2. ²Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

Correspondence: A Diamantopoulos, Department of Business Administration, University of Vienna, Bruenner Strasse 72, Vienna, A-1210, Austria. Tel: +43 1 4277 38031; Fax: + 43 1 4277 38034

Received 12 February 2008; Revised 16 January 2009; Accepted 3 March 2009; Published online 27 August 2009.

Abstract

The importance of establishing equivalence in measurement prior to conducting substantive cross-country comparisons has long been emphasized in international business research. However, all approaches currently available for the investigation of measurement equivalence or invariance (ME/I) assume that the focal measures are reflective in nature. In our paper we offer guidelines for the assessment of ME/I when the focal construct is measured with formative indicators. We first identify distinct types of ME/I that are conceptually consistent with the nature of formative measurement models. We then describe a step-by-step procedure that can be employed to test for these types of ME/I in a comparative context. Lastly, we illustrate the application of the proposed procedure with data from a three-country survey on consumers' product-country image perceptions.