Response Bias in International Marketing Research.

Abstract

The saturation of domestic markets in the industrialized parts of the world, combined with increased competition in home markets from foreign competitors forces many companies to look for opportunities beyond their national boundaries. Surveys are a crucial source of data in international marketing for theory building and answering managerial questions, as secondary data is seldom satisfactory. An important force that stymies the comparison of findings across countries is methodological in nature. Cross-national research presents researchers with a host of methodological challenges that hamper validity, such as differences in response styles and lack of measurement invariance. The dissertation contributes to the literature in three ways. First, hierarchical measurement models are presented that allow marketing researchers to compare countries substantively despite lack of measurement invariance and cross-national differences in response styles. Second, the relationship between culture and stylistic responding is investigated. Third, a procedure is presented that yields country-specific, yet internationally comparable short form marketing scales.