From a recent internal discussion about measurements from our Fitting Machine.

 A number of our customers have strongly held opinions as to what their foot size is and more often than not they believe that their foot is shorter than what the DANA machine measures. Therefore, there are many people out there wearing the wrong size(ie. wrong length AND wrong width) of footwear. This, I think is due in large measure to the fact that most footwear retailers carry only one width. If the customer has a relatively narrow foot they have to "short" the lenght of the boot to get the right feel in the width.    

When this type of customer comes here it isn't surprising that they sometimes question the accuracy of our foot measurement. In these situations, we emphasize that our measurement is merely a guideline. The machine measures length and width only and not the volume of the foot. Also, different styles fit differently. So we try to get the customer to focus on how the boot fits him instead of fixating on its nominal size. That isn't always easy to do with a customer who has the mindset that he's "always worn a size 9.0 and why are we getting him to try on a size 10.0".