Develops a seven‐item scale to assess consumers’ external search activities and assessed the scale’s construct validity. Moreover, to examine the scale’s generalizability across various services, both things‐directed and people‐directed service settings are used. The findings suggest there are two identifiable aspects of consumers’ search activities, source and effort. Evidence of the construct validity of the seven‐item scale is based on exploratory factor analysis, calculation of Cronbach’s alpha, and a nomological assessment of the scale.