Rating scales are one of the most widely used tools in marketing research and commercial market research. They are used to capture information on a range of phenomena. In consumer research, respondents may be asked about their attitudes, perceptions or evaluations of products, brands or messages–among many other possibilities. In other marketing research streams, respondents such as managers or marketing personnel may be asked to rate their company's performance, type of strategic focus, personnel, degree of marketing excellence, training regimes and so forth using such scales.

Rating scales typically require the respondent to select their answer from a range of verbal statements or numbers. Scales that use verbal statements include semantic differential scales and Likert scales. An example of the semantic differential scale is very good... very bad, or pleasant... unpleasant. An example of the Likert response scale is as follows: strongly disagree, disagree, neither disagree nor agree, agree, strongly agree. This particular example is a 5-point Likert scale utilising verbal response descriptors. Likert scales may also use numerical descriptors where the respondent selects an appropriate number to denote their level of agreement. For example, a question could be worded like this:'Indicate your agreement from 1 to 5 where 1 equals strongly disagree and 5 equals strongly agree.'