34.8 Culture and consumer behavior
Markus and Kitayama (1991)
- In Asian cultures, people prefer relatedness and interdependence, while American culture values independence (i.e., focus on the self and expressive of inner attributes)
Jennifer L. Aaker and Maheswaran (1997)
Prediction of dual process models is evaluated in the context of cross-culture: it’s robust across culture
Elaboration LIkelihood Model (Petty and Cacioppo 1979)
Heuristic-Systematic Model (Chaiken 1980)
The concurrent occurrence of both are called “additivity”. It happens when both both heuristic cue-related and attribute-related thoughts are generated (which likely under cases where one does not have contradictory info).
When systematic processing dominates (i.e., overriding heuristics), we call “attenuation”
Heuristics cues can be consensus info (which is more prevalent in collectivist culture)
“Perceptual differences in cue diagnosticity account for systematic differences in persuasive effects.”
In layman’s term, the model is transferable across cultures, but should incorporate cue diagnosticity in the model.
- Cue diagnosticity refers to “the extent to which consumers perceive that inferences based on the information alone would be adequate to achieve their objective.” (p. 322)
Individualism-Collectivism (Cousins 1989; Singelis 1994; Triandis 1989)
Individualism: separateness, internal attributes, uniqueness of individuals
connectedness, social context, relationship
Rodas, John, and Torelli (2021)
Paradox brands (i.e., brands that have contradictory brand meanings) are more appealing to bicultural consumers (due to greater cognitive flexibility, especially those who use an acculturation strategy).
“a paradox brand as a brand identity that includes brand associations that appear to be contradictory in nature.” (p. 2)
- where associations can be either specific (e.g., product benefits) or abstract/symbolic (e.g., brand personalities, value, image).
“brand identity” refers to “a set of brand associations that are selected by marketers to represent what the brand stands for and/or aspires to be.” (p. 2)
brand identity (only positive association) is from firms’ perspectives, whereas the brand image (both positive and negative association) is from consumers’ perspectives.
Contradiction can emerge from the unlikelihood of certain brand associations co-occurrence.
Brand values are defined under Schwartz (1992) (Value structure)
Greater cognitively flexible can lead to greater engagement in paradox brands even for monocultural consumers.
H. (Allan). Chen, Ng, and Rao (2005)
Cross-cultural effect on future evaluation: Westerners are more impatient thus discount the future more than Easterners. In other words, Westerners value immediate consumption more than Easterners.
“Easterners are faced with the threat of a delay in receiving a product (i.e., a prevention loss), they are more impatient, whereas when Westerners are faced with the threat of not being able to enjoy a product early (i.e., a promotion loss), their impatience increases.” (p. 291)
Triandis et al. (1988)
U.S. individualism is reflected in
self-reliance with competition
Low concern for ingroups
Distance from ingroups
While allocentric person feel that they receive more and better quality from their social support, idiocentric person feel more lonely .
Nisbett et al. (2001)
East Asians are more holistic with focus on assigning causality to the whole field and disregard categories and formal logic because they rely on “dialectical” reasoning
Westerners are more analytic because they focus on object and its category, and use formal logic.
“Social organization and social practices can directly affect the plausibility of metaphysical assumptions” (p. 292)
“Social organization and social practices can influence directly the development and use of cognitive processes” (p. 292)