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Culture is recognized as a pivotal variable in country of origin (COO) research. The purpose of this paper is to assess culture from an individual perspective and to examine the extent to which individual cultural orientations have similar associations with 33 manager- and consumer-related variables between two culturally opposite countries: the USA and South Korea.

An online survey is used. The sample size is 540 for the US sample and 572 for the Korean sample. The correlational similarity between the cultural orientations and other variables is analyzed in three ways and confirmed invariant in the majority cases of each analysis.

Individual cultural orientations are measured by Cultural Value Scale (Yoo et al., 2011), a 26-item five-dimensional scale measuring Hofstede’s typology of culture at the individual level. The three-faceted similarity test of each of the 165 pairs of correlations between the USA and Korea samples (i.e. 33 variables × 5 dimensions of individual cultural orientations) shows that the majority of the correlations are significantly similar between the two countries.

This is a first study in examining the invariance of the relationships of all five dimensions of Hofstede’s culture at the individual level to a variety of variables. As the invariance is found to be a norm, the role of culture in the COO phenomena can be studied at the individual level in a country and be expanded to other countries.

The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of voters’ personal and societal values on presidential candidate brand personality preference. In addition, the research examines which brand personalities are deemed most and least important. This research meets the growing demand to further understand how voters develop preferences for brandidates.

Voters ranked which presidential brand personalities they deemed most important in a candidate as well as which of the two major candidates they most associated with that trait. Data were collected weeks in advance of the 2020 presidential election from a national online panel representing a balanced mix of voters by party affiliation.

The results indicate that life satisfaction, political orientation and postmaterialism are significant and provide adequate explanatory power in understanding which brand personality traits are associated with a presidential candidate. Also, using an importance-performance matrix, the authors find which candidate is most identified with various brand personality traits and how important those traits are to voters.

Using the importance-performance matrix for assessing brand/candidate personality preference by consumers/voters provides researchers with a multidimensional method for analyzing how various dimensions influence selection preference. The explanatory power of the independent variables, i.e. political orientation, comparative life satisfaction and societal values, is very low when regressed against personality attributes in general (not assigned to a candidate); however, they provide meaningful results when regressed against personality attributes when assigned to candidates. Understanding the importance of general brand personality attributes is not as important as understanding their importance when associated with a specific brand.

The importance-performance matrix for brand/candidate personality presented in this research clearly indicated and predicted voter preference for the 2020 Presidential election; thus, this tool can be effectively used by political marketers in future elections. Political orientation so strongly influences voter perception of specific candidate brand personality dimensions that they view their preferred candidate to be universally superior to other candidates. Political marketers can appeal to voters based on their political orientation to strengthen the relationship between candidates and voters.

This research investigates how personal and societal values impact voters’ preference for brand personality traits in a presidential candidate. Voter preference for presidential brand personality traits is assessed generically, i.e. not associated with a particular candidate, as well as when they are linked to a specific candidate, i.e. Biden and Trump.

With the growth of worldwide e‐commerce, companies are increasingly targeting foreign online consumers. However, there is a dearth of evidence as to whether global consumers prefer to browse and buy from standardized global web sites or web sites adapted to their local cultures. This study provides evidence from five different countries as to whether global consumers prefer local web content or standardized web content. The study also measures how the degree of cultural adaptation on the web affects consumer perception of site effectiveness.

The purpose of this study is to explore the cross‐cultural generalizability of Yoo et al.’s brand equity creation process model. A two‐step approach is introduced and used to test the factorial invariance of the model cross‐culturally. The results reveal which marketing efforts and brand equity dimensions have invariant effects on brand equity across the US and Korean samples. Specifically, brand loyalty and perceived product quality do not have an invariant effect on brand equity, while brand awareness/associations have an equivalent effect. Price and store image show an equivalent, positive effect on perceived quality; distribution intensity has an equivalent, positive effect on both perceived quality and brand loyalty; and price deals have an equivalent, negative effect on both perceived quality and brand awareness/associations. But advertising has a quite different effect on brand equity. The between‐group differences in the brand equity formation process are explained from a cultural perspective.

This study seeks to examine whether or not the effect of personal cultural orientation on brand‐related consumer behaviors functions invariably at the individual level in two culturally opposite countries (South Korea and the USA).

Data were collected from college students from South Korea and the USA. A total of 415 eligible questionnaires were collected: 212 South Korea and 203 USA. Data analysis was conducted using Multivariate analysis of variance.

It was found that personal collectivistic orientation had a significant effect on both brand loyalty and equity among both Americans and Koreans. Brand loyalty was higher among people of high collectivism than those of low collectivism across brands in both the US and South Korean samples. Likewise, brand equity was also higher among people of high collectivism than those of low collectivism across brands in both countries. These findings indicated that regardless of their national culture, collectivist consumers would show higher brand loyalty and equity than individualist consumers.

One limitation was that only one product category was examined in only two countries. Future research will need the validate the findings by including more product categories across more countries. In addition, other types of personal cultural orientation need to be investigated.

One major contribution of the study is that it examines the personal cultural orientation, not stereotyping consumers by their country or subculture membership. The other contribution is that the effect of personal collectivistic orientation holds regardless of country‐level culture.

The purpose of this study is to examine the interactive effect of price and price deal. Specifically, it desires to measure how consumers' behavioral intentions toward the brand are affected for a high‐priced brand and a low‐priced brand when a price deal is offered.

A two (price level: high versus low; between) by two (price deal: absent versus 40 percent off; between) experimental design was used. Study 1 tested the hypotheses for two existing brands, whereas Study 2 did so for a fictitious brand.

The analysis confirmed a strong interactive effect between price and price deal: price deals do not have a uniform effect across brands but a different effect depending on the price level of the brand. Specifically, for a high‐priced brand, a negative effect of price deals on behavioral intentions (brand equity, brand loyalty, and purchase intention) was found. On the contrary, for a low‐priced brand, a positive effect of price deals on each of the same behavioral intention variables was found.

Future research needs to study different types of products and samples to enhance the external validity of the findings. Real market data that recorded price changes and price deal offerings over time need to be examined to confirm the findings of the study.

A managerial implication is that high‐priced brands should avoid price deals, whereas low‐priced brands could benefit from price deals.

When the findings are extended to the public‐sector or governmental services, providing costly services at a discounted price (e.g. universal healthcare) may not be welcome, as that policy is likely to make fellow citizens underestimate the value of the services and doubt the quality.

The study is very original because it does not repeat any past research, but taps into a problem not previously investigated. The value of the study is very straightforward for brand and promotional managers.

The emergence and diffusion of the Internet has prompted a surge in web portal sites that are designed to meet the specific needs of ethnic Internet users who are not native English speakers. These ethnic portal sites may be set up by global portal giants (e.g. Yahoo!) or by local entrepreneurs (e.g. netease.com in China). Often, because of the different origins of these sites, they tend to have different operating philosophies and varying appeals to ethnic Internet users. In this study, we first analyze the differences and similarities among different types of ethnic portals. We then propose a conceptual model concerning the factors that affect the patronage of ethnic portals by ethnic Internet users. An empirical study was designed to test the conceptual model with data collected from Mainland Chinese Internet users. Finally, implications of the study results for ethnic portals are presented.

Establishing the validity and measurement equivalence of core marketing concepts in the emerging market economies of Africa is a key step in assessing the transferability of modern marketing theory and managerial practice to these countries. However, measurement equivalence issues are rarely addressed in studies of marketing practices in Africa. Accordingly, this study examines the equivalence of core marketing concepts based on interviews of 459 marketing managers from Kenya, Nigeria, Japan and the USA. The results show that optimal scaling analysis of the managers’ evaluations provide more valid and meaningful assessment than that of the raw data. The managers’ evaluations of the concepts revealed amazingly similar or prototypical perceptions of marketing’s core concepts and its applicability in their organizations, despite the profound country environmental differences. It appears that the concepts fall into two cross‐national categories of applicability that permeate the industrialized and developing country categorization. Managerial and research implications are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a scale to measure social religiosity (SR) and assess its measurement invariance across different cultures.

The research relied on samples from China (n=486), India (n=377), Japan (n=362), Korea (n=386), and the USA (n=580). The invariance process involved carrying out a series of confirmatory factor analyses with progressively more restrictive constraints.

Results show the SR scale to be reliable and valid across culturally and religiously diverse countries. Implications of the findings are also discussed.

Based on Katz (1988) this is a new scale to measure SR and its measurement invariance is assessed across culturally divergent countries.

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the existence and strength of the relationship between proactive environmental policies and brand equity for the winery. Results of this study suggest that consumer perceptions about product quality, consumer trust, consumer perceptions about pricing, and positive expectations for the consequences of the winery's actions undertaking the pro‐environmental policies, all have strong, positive relationships with the winery's brand equity. Trust in the winery and brand equity for the winery increased significantly when the winery in this study adopted proactive environmental business policies.