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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.

Aims to examine the proposition that consumer sales promotions are more effective when they provide benefits that are congruent with those of the promoted product. This proposition is considered at the ethnic‐group level (i.e. do differences in cultural values at this level have an impact on sales promotion effectiveness?).

A quasi‐experimental design is used to test a series of hypotheses based on a sample of Anglo‐Australians and Chinese‐Australians. The main experiment is informed by the results of two pretests.

First, there are significant differences in consumer cultural values at an ethnic‐group level. Second, despite these differences, ethnicity does not have a significant impact on responses to sales promotions. Third, the expected congruency effects between products and promotion types are not found.

Some of the detailed results match those reported in previous studies, but there are important differences too.

There is a need to be aware of differing cultural values at an ethnic‐group level. Notwithstanding this inference, the second finding suggests that there continues to be scope for using standardised strategies when promoting to different ethnic groups. Finally, considerable caution should be exercised when planning promotion strategies around hoped‐for congruency effects.

New light is cast on the relationship between consumer differences at an ethnic‐group level and the effectiveness of various types of sales promotion for utilitarian and hedonic products.

This study aims to explore antecedents of supporting local food branded by a sustainable state-operated agricultural marketing program (SOAMP). Cultural values and pro-environmental attitudes were examined as well as their effect on purchase and word-of-mouth intent.

The values, attitudes and behavior model served as the framework for testing the measurement and structural models and mediation effects. A total of 259 individuals participated in the online survey.

Structural model was a good fit to the data. The values of collectivism and long-term orientation were the strongest predictors of intent to purchase and spread word of mouth about SOAMP branded products. Green consumption attitudes mediate the relationship from collectivism value to intent to support products branded by a sustainability marketing program.

This study is original in that it challenges the notion that local food consumption is primarily driven by pro-green attitudes. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is also the first of its kind to approach local food and pro-green consumption from a cultural perspective by using Hofstede’s cultural values scale to explore how individuals’ values affect their support of products branded by a sustainability marketing program.

While there have always been cultural differences between countries and between individuals, the virtualisation of markets is rendering the impact of these differences even more salient. There is clear evidence that cultural dimensions are relevant in the adoption and use of e-commerce. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the significant effects of individual cultural dimensions on perceived product quality, perceived risk and purchase intention in e-commerce platforms.

A questionnaire was developed to serve as a tool of measurement. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to examine whether all the indicators for the constructs are reliable. A multiple regression analysis was carried out to test the hypotheses.

The results reveal that, in the case of e-commerce platforms, the cultural dimensions uncertainty-avoidance and collectivism exert a significant influence on perceived product quality, perceived risk and purchase intention.

The present study is based on real well-known e-commerce platforms which could have influenced the responses of the sample due to potential past experiences of use. An experimental design based on fictitious platforms could offer more objective findings.

This research contributes to the understanding of e-commerce and the behaviour of consumers during online purchasing, taking into account the cultural differences that may exist between them.

The literature on individual cultural dimensions – that is, non-national cases – and the variables analysed in the present study suffers from great limitations. This study complements a growing interest in analysing the individual cultural dimensions and their effects on the sphere of e-commerce, specifically on perceived product quality, purchase intention and perceived risk during browsing, measured in terms of the six types of risk prevalent in e-commerce platforms.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the discussion of cross-cultural research, in particular the use of dimensions of national culture, for international marketing.

Discuss definitions of values and culture, analyze cultural models as to purpose and design and applications of models to international marketing.

International marketers benefit from applying dimensions of national culture, but researchers make mistakes in applying and interpreting such dimensions, thus discrediting useful means of research for international marketing.

Researchers should understand the problems of multi-level research and interpret dimensions better when using them for research.

The value of this paper is in clearing up some of the misunderstandings about dimensions of national culture.

The purpose of this paper is to explore cultural sources of variation on consumers’ expectations and evaluations of service quality within local emerging markets.

The authors employ a multi-method approach. The multi-method research design utilizes: first, netnography to examine foreign consumers’ blogs and online communities; second, interviews with local and foreign consumers to unveil critical incidents in service encounters; and third, an online survey of 139 foreign consumers living in Chile and 460 Chilean consumers to map differences in their expectations and evaluations of services.

A general analysis of local and foreign consumers living in an emerging market reveals that these two groups do not differ significantly in their expectations of service quality. The authors also find that differences in expectations and evaluations of service quality within a local emergent market are only partially explained by aggregating consumers according to their country or region of origin. Finally, the findings demonstrate that examining cultural differences at the individual level generates a better understanding of how cultural factors impact consumer expectations and evaluations of service quality within emerging markets.

The research is limited to one emerging market (Chile) and focusses largely in one industry (banking). Further research should be conducted to examine the findings in other contexts, including developed markets, and to identify how other cultural differences (e.g. language mastery) within local markets may impact consumer expectations and evaluations of services.

Service companies operating in emerging markets should account for cultural differences when determining service standards and protocols. These differences may cut across the local-foreign divide and suggest that profiling foreign customers depending on their country of origin is not the most adequate approach for providing excellence in service and enjoying the benefits that follow.

Foreign consumers living in a local market are frequently considered a homogeneous group distinct from local consumers, and are treated as such by public and private service providers. The study demonstrates that foreign consumers may be more or less similar to local consumers depending on their cultural values, and should not be considered as a uniform group.

The findings extend research on consumer expectations and evaluations of service quality to account for cultural diversity within local emerging markets. The authors demonstrate that a cluster-approach to examining consumer expectations and evaluations of service quality better accounts for variations due to cultural values within local markets.

While the consumer engagement (CE) concept is gaining traction in the literature, little remains known regarding the ways in which consumers displaying differing cultural traits engage with brands and their differences. The purpose of this paper is to explore CE with brands for consumers exhibiting differing cultural traits, and develop a set of research propositions for these individuals’ cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and social CE in brand interactions. These propositions, collectively, reflect consumers’ individual-level cultural CE styles – consumers’ motivationally driven disposition to think, feel, act, and relate to others in a certain manner characteristic of their specific individual cultural traits in brand interactions.

In this conceptual paper, literature is reviewed in the areas of CE and its conceptual relationship with Yoo et al.’s (2011) individual cultural values.

Key differences between individual-level cultural traits and consumers’ ensuing cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and social CE with brands are addressed in a set of research propositions based on Yoo et al.’s model of individual cultural values, from which the concept of individual-level cultural CE styles is developed.

This research explores differences across individuals displaying differing cultural traits and their ensuing CE with brands, which remains underexplored to date. It also develops the concept of individual-level cultural CE styles, which reflect consumers’ characteristic cultural trait-based cognitions, emotions, behaviors, and social dynamics in engaging with particular brands.

The outlined managerial implications reveal that unique marketing approaches are expected to be effective for engaging consumers exhibiting different cultural traits with brands, based on their distinctive CE styles (e.g. focusing on personalized interactions/interactions that stress consumers’ similarity to and fit with salient others for individualist/collectivist consumers, respectively).

This paper makes two important theoretical contributions. First, by offering a conceptual analysis of consumers displaying differing cultural traits and their ensuing engagement with brands, it provides an early attempt to explore individual-level cultural CE-based differences. Second, it develops the concept of individual-level cultural CE styles, which is expected to hold important theoretical and managerial implications.

Past research has shown that culture has significant effects on people's evaluation of and responses to risk. Despite this important role, the supply chain risk literature has been silent on this matter. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of cultural value orientations on managerial perception of and responses to a supply disruption risk.

The authors conduct a scenario-based experiment to investigate the effect of cultural value orientations – i.e. individualism-collectivism and uncertainty avoidance – on individuals' perception of risk and supplier switching intention in the face of a supply disruption.

The findings highlight the negative effect of individualism-collectivism on disruption risk perception and switching intention in high uncertain circumstances. However, these relationships are non-significant in relatively less uncertain situations. Moreover, the findings show that the impact of uncertainty avoidance on risk perception and supplier switching is positive and significant in both low and high uncertain circumstances.

Extant research has traditionally assumed that when confronted with disruption risks, managers make decisions using an economic utility model, to best serve the long-term objectives of the firm. This paper draws from advances of behavioural research to show that cultural value orientations influence such decisions through a mediating mechanism of subjective risk perception.

There is an increasing awareness among manufacturers to make production more sustainable in Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. Manufacturers are now urged to not only focus on the business profit but also concern on environment protection by producing green products. However, issues may arise regarding the preferences of customers on green products, which will vary due to the influence of cultural values. This will give an impact on the marketing of green products. The aim of this study is to identify the influence of cultural values on the green products design in Malaysia and Indonesia.

A pretest on the survey instruments was performed to ensure the reliability and validity of the questionnaire. The collected data were statistically analyzed based on the satisfaction level, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

The results showed that customer preferences in Malaysia were mostly influenced by uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation and power distance, excluding collectivism and masculinity. In Indonesia, the dimension of uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation had significant influence, whereas power distance, masculinity and collectivism dimension had no influence. Eco-label was identified as the most important factor for green products in Malaysia and having product services characteristics factor for product lifetime extension in Indonesia.

For practices, the cultural values and preferred characteristics identified in this study provide valuable information to policymakers and businesses on what draws customers toward green products in Malaysia and Indonesia. This finding can be used as supported data for the policymakers in order to achieve sustainable development goal (SDGs) in Malaysia and Indonesia.

The findings of this study provide valuable information for designers to design products with green characteristics that cater to the consumer market in Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as other countries which may have similar cultural traits.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore the impact of culture (using individualism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance) on entrepreneurial risk taking behavior which leads to the opportunity exploitation decision. Moreover, it also uses risk taking behavior of entrepreneurial as the mediation variable between culture and opportunity exploitations decisions.

The study took place in Tanzania, which is allocated in East Africa and is one of under researched countries. In total, 140 entrepreneurs who own venture of 5-99 employees were able to be interviewed using a survey questionnaire. In this study, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the direct and indirect relationship of culture in entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation decisions.

After hypothesis testing, the empirical results showed that Tanzania’s culture has an impact on entrepreneurial risk taking behavior, which influences entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation decision. It also showed culture through individualism and uncertainty avoidance measurements affect entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation decisions. The empirical results on power distance were insignificant.

This study is a wake-up call to policy makers and formal institutions such as government authorities, education institutions and religion institutions. Thus, culture has an ability to influence the behavior of entrepreneurs and so the performance of ventures if it is consistent and well structured. Therefore it should be not taken for granted. Data for our study are based on only two cities and therefore the results should not be generalized as the whole country’s inference. Generalizability is questioned because the data are from only two cities in Tanzania and therefore future research should include more cities to be able to validate the generalizability.

This study is a wake-up call to policymakers and formal institutions such as government authorities, education institutions and religion institutions. Thus culture has an ability to influence the behavior of entrepreneurs and so the performance of ventures if it is consistent and well structured. Therefore it should be not taken for granted. Data for our study are based on only two cities and therefore the results should not be generalized as the whole country’s inference.

In the country which has well-structured culture, influence the behavior of entrepreneurs to exploit opportunities.

This is the first empirical study to use SEM for exploring the culture of individualism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance impact on entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation in Tanzania.