Cross-cultural perspective on sustainable consumption : implications for consumer motivations and promotion

Firms in the past have based their marketing and promotion strategies on the assumption of infinite resources and zero environmental impact. With the growing importance of environmental costs associated with finite resources, firms need to revisit their marketing and promotion strategies. This study defines and conceptualizes horizontal/vertical individualism–collectivism (H/V I-C) cultural value orientations as antecedents of sustainable consumption. Drawing on H/V I-C value orientations, this study attempts to build a sustainable consumption model to better understand how horizontal/vertical individualism–collectivism cultural values are reflected in consumers’ sustainable consumption motives and how they can be translated into persuasive advertising appeals tailored to specific cultural segments. This study contributes to provide new theoretical and managerial insights into understanding culturally relevant sustainable consumption motives and to establish appropriate strategies of sustainable consumption promotion in cross-cultural contexts. Most importantly, this study provides implications to companies for balancing more carefully their growth goals with the need to pursue sustainability across different cultures.© The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

A Functional Approach to Schwartz\u27s Cultural Dimensions: Persuasive Appeals Corresponding to Individual Cultural Values

The goal of this study is to add to the literature of advertising as well as consumer psychology, specifically testing whether people\u27s attitude towards online advertising would depend on how much the advertising resonated with their individual cultural values. Hereby, Schwartz\u27s cultural dimensions were adopted, namely Hierarchy, Egalitarianism, Embeddedness, Intellectual Autonomy and Affective Autonomy. Past research has suggested that when advertising contained the same value a person stresses, that person would have more favorable attitudes towards the ad. More relevantly, research has demonstrated that if an advertisement was more relevant with a person\u27s individual cultural values (Torelli et al., 2009), it would increase the favorability towards the ad. Using moving online banner ads, rather than still images, as advertising stimuli, this study tries to further investigate how advertising works on people. By exposing respondents to online banners embedding different cultural values, the study measured their attitudes towards the banners together with information on demographics and control variables. The results seemed not to support former studies that advertising containing the same value a person stresses received more favorabilit

Does Culture Matter for the Design of Chatbots Promoting Blood Donation Behaviour? - The Difference in Perception of Culture-Tailored Conversation Styles

While blood products are a critical resource in healthcare systems, providing sufficient blood products is a worldwide challenge, especially so since the COVID-19 pandemic. As easy and timely access to information is crucial to convince (potential) donors to change their behaviour and become regular donors, chatbots can offer fast and easy access to information whenever (potential) donors need it. Due to their human-like design, chatbots can help motivating and convincing users to donate blood regularly to work against the ongoing, post-pandemic challenges in providing sufficient blood supply. Based on previous findings, we assume that users’ perception of a blood donation chatbot can vary worldwide, in relation to the incorporated design features. As part of a design science study, we conducted an online between-subject experiment with participants from USA, Germany, South Africa and India. We could show a significant negative moderating effect of horizontal individualism in terms of the chatbot’s individualistic conversation style and the perceived similarity in social group membership, implicating the so-called “contribution conflict” with regard to IS and culture

Cross-cultural electronic word-of-mouth: a systematic literature review

Purpose: Global adoption of the internet and mobile usage results in a huge variation in the cultural backgrounds of consumers who generate and consume electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Unsurprisingly, a research trend on cross-cultural eWOM has emerged. However, there has not been an attempt to synthesize this research topic. This paper aims to bridge this gap. Methodology: This research paper conducts a systematic literature review of the current research findings on cross-cultural eWOM. Journal articles published from 2006 to 2021 are included. This study then presents the key issues in the extant literature and suggests potential future research. Findings: The findings show that there has been an upward trend in the number of publications on cross-cultural eWOM since the early 2010s, with a relatively steeper increase toward 2020. The findings also synthesize cross-cultural eWOM research into four elements and suggest potential future research avenues. Value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is currently no exhaustive/integrated review of cross-cultural eWOM research. This research fills the need to summarize the current state of cross-cultural eWOM literature and identifies research questions to be addressed in the future.Comment: 18 pages, 2 tables, 2 figure

The lived experience of an American expatriate in Ghana: A rhetorical analysis of facebook postings to understand a cross-cultural behavior

Using rhetorical analyses of the Facebook updates and postings, the lived experience of an American Expatriate in Ghana is told through the lenses of a Ghanaian living in the United States. The study reviews the contemporary understanding and importance of expatriation to organizations and provides detailed description and analysis of different models with theoretical base from cognitive and social psychology and sociology including models developed by Fons Trompenaars, Geert Hofstede, Harry Triandis, and E.T. Hall to understand the thinking and behavior of this expatriate as revealed through postings on his Facebook page. The paper concludes by re-affirming the importance of pre-departure cultural sensitivity training and the significant role of HRD professionals even in non-typical HRD –related organizations.Cross-Cultural; facebook; expatriation; social psychology

International SMA Behavioural Implications: An Analysis of the Mediating and Moderating Effects

The exponential growth of social media and the success of SMA around the globe has captured the attention of marketers, that now use SMA as an integrating part of their communication strategies. Even though, SMA has proven its worth as an important advertising tool, it is still making its way into academic research. Moreover, there is scant knowledge on consumers’ behaviour towards SMA, and even more so in cross-cultural settings. In this work I test a theory-grounded, four-stage model that considers the antecedent/outcome – belief, value, attitude and behaviour - process that consumers go through when they come across SMA. Additionally, this model enables the assessment of the interactive behavioural responses and contributes to the understanding of the mediating effects of SMA attitude and value, also considering the differences of consumers’ behaviours through cultures and social media types. The results confirm the mediating role of value and the partial mediating role of attitude, with the exception of the relationships of SMA credibility and the behavioural constructs, social interaction behaviour and message interaction behaviour. Additionally, empirical evidence is presented on positive attitudes towards SMA increasing consumers’ behavioural responses towards SMA. The moderating effects of culture and social media types were not confirmed, what might contribute to the discussion of the globality of international SMA. This reach provides a better understanding on the consumers’ international SMA behavioural responses

REACTANCE THEORY AND SELF-CONSTRUAL IN THE EAST AND WEST

Using psychological reactance theory (Brehm, 1966) as an explanatory framework, this dissertation experimentally tests the effects of appeal type, restoration type, and self-construal on freedom threat perceptions, reactance arousal, and receptiveness of health risk messages on two different populations (Taiwan and U.S.A.) within Western and Eastern cultural contexts. Self-construal and culturalism constructs are applied to examine the influence of culture-related issues on the manifestation of psychological reactance. Relative to culturalism, several findings indicate self-construal is more predictive of reactance arousal and its associated effects on the processing of persuasive health risk messages. Moreover, the positive association between threat perception and reactance arousal may be less apparent then previously assumed. Finally, as found in previous research, the effectiveness of restoration postscripts at reducing reactance was affirmed; however, the nuanced nature of their effectiveness requires some qualification: Each of the five restoration postscript methods used in this study was effective at reducing perceived threat to freedom only in combination with its correspondingly appropriate message appeal type. The ramifications of these results for the effective design of public service announcements (PSAs) targeting risky health behaviors in emerging adults is discussed, and recommendations are offered for producing successful PSAs advocating substance abuse prevention and safe sex within Western and Eastern cultural contexts

Individualism and Collectivism in Chinese and American Advertisements

This study examined the different values in TV advertisements targeting younger Chinese (13-29), Older Chinese (55 or above), Younger Americans (13-34), and older Americans (55 or above) using Hofstede\u27s (1984) individualism-collectivism dimensions. With the open door policy imposed in China, younger Chinese became Westernized. A content analysis of 566 TV ads was examined to test the degree of individualism, collectivism, modernity themes, and traditional themes in TV ads among the four target groups. Three hypotheses and one research question guiding this study proposed that TV ads targeting younger Chinese would score higher in individualism and modernity; TV ads targeting older Chinese would score higher in collectivism and tradition; and TV ads targeting Americans in general would score higher in individualism and modernity than TV ads targeting younger Chinese. These hypotheses were partly supported. Results showed that TV ads targeting younger Chinese score high in individualism, but not modernity. Also, TV ads targeting Americans score higher than TV ads targeting younger Chinese. Moreover, the study also found that there is no value difference between the two target groups in the U.S. The findings and future research are discussed

Cultural Values, Connection, and Participatory Cultural Divide: Chinese Generation Cohort Differences in Adoption and Use of WeChat

abstract: This study explores how WeChat, one of the most popular Chinese-based Social Network Sites (SNSs), has been adopted and used under different patterns between two Chinese generation cohorts, namely “The post-70” (i.e., people who were born in the 1970s) and “The post-90” (i.e., people who were born in the 1990s). Three major issues were examined in this Study: (1) what are the differences in WeChat connection between two generations; (2) how Chinese post-70 and the post-90 cohorts differ regarding their cultural value orientations and how those differences influence their WeChat connection; (3) if there is a participatory cultural divide between two generation cohorts. Two hundred and eight the post-70 cohort and 221 the post-90 cohort were recruited to complete a 91-item survey. Results indicated significant differences between the post-70 and the post-90 cohorts in WeChat adoption and use, collectivistic/individualistic (COL/IND) orientations, and participation in creating and spreading of popular online memes. Moreover, factors influencing human capital- enhancing activities on WeChat were examined. Also explored were the influence of cultural values on the motivations to connect to the Internet and frequencies of different types of WeChat activities. Major findings and limitations were discussed.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Communication 201