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Journal of Consumer Psychology 20 (2010) 226 – 227

Methods Dialogue
Rejoinder to commentators on structural equations modeling primers:
Bentler, Bagozzi, and Fabrigar, Porter, and Norris
Dawn Iacobucci
Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, Department of Marketing, 401 21st, Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37202, USA
Received 10 March 2010; accepted 10 March 2010
Available online 31 March 2010

Abstract

In this brief article, I applaud the commentators for the many points they make, their offering additional perspectives, and for expanding the
territory of structural equations modeling coverage begun in the Journal of Consumer Psychology primers.
© 2010 Society for Consumer Psychology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

While acknowledgements are traditionally reserved for author
notes, the nature of this exercise compels me to express my deep
gratitude, first to the authors of the commentaries, all eminent
scholars who took the time with this dialog exchange. As is
known to the readers of the Journal of Consumer Psychology,
Professor Bentler is a demi-god in the psychometrics world, from
which consumer psychologists and marketers have borrowed
steadily. My first memory of Bentler, after having read many of
his articles, was seeing him at a Psychometric Society conference.
A timid (it's true!) and dorky (hasn't changed) doctoral student, I
nonetheless went up to him and just said, “Hi.” I'll always
appreciate that he just gave me back a friendly, “Hi” instead of a
scary response to intimidate me and remind me of my place in the
world. Professor Bagozzi is of course acclaimed as a demi-god in
our own field. My first impressions of Bagozzi were the
comments my colleagues at Kellogg made about the intellectual
firepower and creativity and curiosity of one of their most
distinguished alumni. When I got a chance to meet him in person,
I was touched by his life mantra, “family and work,” showing his
dedication and love for both, in that order. (Rick, we have yet to
venture to Italy together—soon, I hope?) I wish I had a story about
meeting Professor Fabrigar, but I have not yet had the pleasure. Of
course I've read and been educated by many Fabrigar writings,
and I will merely extend balance theory and say that any demi-god
of Joe Priester's is a demi-god of mine. I'm confident that doctoral
students Porter and Norris are in good hands, receiving excellent
training. Finally, my heartfelt thanks are equally due to the
Editor, C. W. Park, who takes on all projects with great gusto, and
Associate Editor, Joseph Priester, who, besides his keen intellect,
has to be our field's nicest person. Both CW and Joe solicited and
managed this intellectual process flawlessly.
My comments regarding the manuscripts themselves are
few. The primers, “Everything you always wanted to know
about SEM (structural equations modeling) but were afraid to
ask,” and “Structural equations modeling: fit indices, sample size,
and advanced topics,” appeared in the Journal of Consumer
Psychology (Iacobucci, 2009; Iacobucci, 2010) in issues 19
(pp.673–680) and 20 (pp.90–98), respectively. Comments were
solicited from Professors Bentler (2010), Bagozzi (2010), and
Fabrigar, Porter and Norris (2010).
Professor Bentler is right (of course) on all the points he
makes. It's eminently true, for example, that EQS is a more
accessible, intuitive, and insightful way to learn and use SEMs.
The matrix approach is useful if one is to navigate the
psychometrics literature, but wholly unneeded for the typical
user in an application exercise. There is a machismo in knowing
the matrices, but it is true that the difference between Lisrel and
EQS is analogous to that between the old DOS systems and the
contemporary Windows interfaces.
Professor Bagozzi makes his usual terrific contribution in his
commentary. His status as one of our field's gurus in philosophy
of science shines through in his thoughtful discussion of causality.

E-mail address: dawn.iacobucci@owen.vanderbilt.edu.

1057-7408/$ - see front matter © 2010 Society for Consumer Psychology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jcps.2010.03.004
 D. Iacobucci / Journal of Consumer Psychology 20 (2010) 226–227
It's true of course, that SEMs are simply another modeling tool,
and researchers must be smart in the logic of their use, regardless
of the statistical technique. SEM can no more be interpreted
simplistically than could beta weights from an ordinary least
squares regression in the presence of multicollinearity, for
example.
Professor Fabrigar, Porter and Norris clearly participated in
the spirit of the articles' titles. They also weighed in on the
causality issue—it should be clear to the user of SEM that in
making such claims, one enters tricky territory, but indeed it is
not a unfamiliar or unique set of issues. I concur that the sample
size issue is omnipresent, and again, these authors offer useful
suggestions on how a user may frame the question so as to yield
a reasonable estimate about requisite size.
Conclusion
The literature on SEM models is mature enough that the many
associated issues cover large domains. Each of the commentators
227
mentioned a struggle with comprehensiveness and succinctness,
so it is terrific that all three contributed independently in such
a complementary manner. I hope that this dialog encourages
more frequent use of SEMs to enhance our scholarly pursuits in
consumer psychology and marketing.
References
Bagozzi, Richard P. (2010). Structural equation models are modeling tools with
many ambiguities: comments acknowledging the need for caution and humility
in their use. Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Bentler, Peter M. (2010). SEM with simplicity and accuracy. Journal of Consumer
Psychology.
Fabrigar, Porter, & Norris (2010). Some things you should know about struc-
tural equation modeling and never thought to ask. Journal of Consumer
Psychology.
Iacobucci, Dawn (2009). Everything you always wanted to know about SEM
(structural equations modeling) but were afraid to ask. Journal of Consumer
Psychology, 19, 673−680.
Iacobucci, Dawn (2010). Structural equations modeling: fit indices, sample size,
and advanced topics. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 20, 90−98.