The Catalog Usability Questionnaire — Adoption and Validation of a Usability Scale for Print‑Catalogs

Abstract

The usability of interfaces is mainly tested via standardized‑questionnaires or via less standardized processoriented verbal protocols. Standardized questionnaires have got the advantage of generating reasonable indices with quite low effort. In contrast, process oriented verbal protocols offer the opportunity of gaining more thorough insights into the interaction and the problems that might come up. While efficient standardized methods for the measurement of online media with their non‑linear structure already exist, there are no such methods to measure the usability of linear structured offline media. However, it can be assumed that usability of offline print media plays an important role for a brand's image and the buying behavior of customers. The objective of our study was to adapt a scale to measure usability of online shops to print catalogs in order to measure their usability. A field study (n = 60) and a laboratory experiment (n = 92) have been made to test the reliability and validity of the adapted scale. Participants were asked to evaluate the catalogs of two travel companies by using the adapted questionnaire. Concerning the reliability, in both studies the scale showed good internal consistency. The values of Cronbach's alpha were comparable to results in studies using the original scale with online shops. Concerning the validity, results show correlations between usability and buyer's intention as well as recommendation. Furthermore, the usability scores of both catalogs differed as experts (n = 20) expected. Moreover, the questionnaire was validated using the results of verbal protocols that were collected simultaneously in the laboratory study. In example, the correlation between usability scores and problems that came up during the interaction was proven. Overall, the results support the usefulness of the adapted scale to measure the usability of print‑catalogs. Implications for research and management will be discussed.