Marketplace stigma: customers’ stigmatization of employees with hepatitis C virus

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate the first instrument to measure the source of customers’ stigmatization of employees with hepatitis C virus (HCV) in Egypt.

The development and validation processes unfolded as follows: an item pool was generated from focus groups and previous studies on stigma; the initial instrument was evaluated by three experts and pilot-tested; the instrument was used to collect data from 500 Egyptian consumers to determine its dimensionality; to test this structure, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on a new sample of 300 Egyptian consumers.

Exploratory factor analysis showed that the instrument captures three factors: devaluation, avoidance and pity. Results confirmed that customers’ stigmatization of employees with HCV is a multidimensional construct that is manifested in these three dimensions.

Despite the importance of disease stigma, management scholars have not given it sufficient attention. This paper offers new insights into the study of a particular type of workplace discrimination and ways of measuring it.