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An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article.
Introduction
Over the past 25 years the economy has become increasingly global, thus resulting in greater heterogeneity of markets and consumers. This heterogeneity is due, in large part, to differences across national cultures. In order to better understand how these differences influence consumer behavior many academicians have utilized [9] Hofstede's (1980) cultural framework. Indeed, Hofstede's framework has been applied in a wide variety of consumer marketing contexts;, e.g. in studies of advertising ([2] Alden et al. , 1993; [8] Gregory and Munch, 1997; [30] Zandpour et al. , 1994), complaint behavior ([14] Liu and McClure, 2001; [16] Mattila and Patterson, 2004), global brand strategies ([21] Roth, 1995), consumer innovativeness ([27] Steeenkamp et al. , 1999), impulsive buying ([12] Kacen and Lee, 2002), persuasion ([1] Aaker and Maheswaran, 1997), acceptance of new products and innovations ([29] Yeniyurt and Townsend, 2003; [25] Singh, 2006), service quality expectations ([15] Laroche et al. , 2005), ethical decision making ([4] Blodgett et al. , 2001), and in studies of Chinese consumers ([20] Piron, 2006), etc. Although other taxonomies have been developed (e.g., [28] Triandis, 1995; [23] Schwartz, 1994) it is Hofstede's framework that has provided the foundation upon which most cross-cultural marketing and consumer behavior research has been based.
Although culture was originally conceptualized at an aggregate, national level; several researchers (e.g., [26] Steenkamp, 2001; [24] Schwartz and Ros, 1995) have noted that there are different layers of culture, and that the concept of culture can be applied at smaller units of analysis. [7] Craig and Douglas (2006, p. 336) argue that "... the development of linkages across national borders imply that national culture is no longer as relevant as the unit of analysis for examining culture ... less reliance should be placed on the country as the unit of analysis". Similarly; [15] Laroche et al. (2005, p. 282) assert that "A serious limitation of national cultural indices is their high level of aggregation, which may hide important variations, including regional ... and individual differences and experiences." This issue is particularly relevant for researchers who study consumer behavior, and thus are interested in cognitions, attitudes, perceptions, and behavior at an individual and/or...