Measuring personal cultural orientations: scale development and ...

J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2010) 38:787–806 DOI 10.1007/s11747-009-0184-7

ORIGINAL EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

Measuring personal cultural orientations: scale development and validation Piyush Sharma

Received: 10 April 2009 / Accepted: 1 December 2009 / Published online: 18 December 2009 # Academy of Marketing Science 2009

Abstract Cross-cultural studies using Hofstede’s national scores to operationalize his five cultural factors at an individual level suffer from ecological fallacy, and those using self-report scales treat cultural factors as unidimensional constructs and provide little or no evidence of the construct validity and measurement equivalence of these scales. This paper reconceptualizes Hofstede’s five cultural factors as ten personal cultural orientations and develops a new 40-item scale to measure them. It also establishes the validity, reliability, and cross-cultural measurement equivalence of the new scale, and discusses its advantages over other scales. Keywords Culture . Horizontal–vertical . Individualism–collectivism . Long-term orientation . Masculinity–femininity . Power distance . Uncertainty avoidance

Introduction Most studies on cross-cultural differences in consumer behavior operationalize personal cultural orientations for individual consumers based on the national scores of Hofstede’s (1980, 1991) five cultural dimensions, namely individualism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and long-term orientation (Bearden et al. 2006a; Soares et al. 2007). However, Hofstede’s nation-level cultural dimensions are conceptually and empirically quite P. Sharma (*) Department of Management and Marketing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected]

different from individual cultural values as conceptualized and measured by others because all the citizens of a country may not share similar cultural characteristics (Bond 2002; Hofstede 1991, p. 253; Oyserman et al. 2002a). Hence, there are doubts about the validity of using national scores on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions as measures of personal cultural orientations. In response to these concerns, others measure individual cultural values using various self-report scales, including the 32-item work-related values scale (Hofstede 1980), the 32-item Idiocentrism–Allocentrism Scale (Triandis et al. 1985), the 20-item Value Survey Module, VSM 94 (Hofstede 1994), the 24-item Self-Construal Scale, SCS (Singelis 1994), the 26-item Cultural Values Scale, CVSCALE (Donthu and Yoo 1998), and the 20-item cultural dimensions scale (Furrer et al. 2000). However, most of these scales operationalize each cultural factor as a unidimensional construct despite growing evidence to the contrary, and they provide little or no evidence of their validity and cross-cultural measurement equivalence (Bearden et al. 2006a; Oyserman et al. 2002a; Soares et al. 2007; Taras et al. 2009). The 16-item Horizontal–Vertical Individualism–Collectivism scale (Triandis and Gelfand 1998) is one of the few scales to conceptualize Individualism (IND) and Collectivism (COL) as multi-dimensional constructs. Some find this scale reliable (Bearden et al. 2006a; Shavitt et al. 2006); others question its dimensionality and measurement equivalence (Li and Aksoy 2007) and suggest that the current horizontal/ vertical approaches may not adequately represent the differences in power and equality (Oyserman 2006). Similar concerns exist about scales that try to measure other cultural orientations such as uncertainty avoidance, masculinity– femininity, and long vs. short-term orientation (Bearden et al. 2006a; Soares et al. 2007; Taras et al. 2009).

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Hence, there is a need for a rigorously developed multidimensional scale to measure the individual differences in personal cultural orientations in a reliable and valid manner across different cultures and help the growing research on cross-cultural differences in consumer behavior (Bearden et al. 2006a; Soares et al. 2007; Taras et al. 2009). In this paper, the author addresses this need by reconceptualizing Hofstede’s five nation-level cultural dimensions as ten individual-level personal cultural orientations and by developing a new 40-item scale using well-established scale development practices to measure these orientations. He also tests the new scale for its content, face, convergent, discriminant, nomological, and predictive validity using the recommended statistical procedures, and assesses its crosscultural measurement equivalence using the step-wise multi-group SEM approach. Finally, the paper discusses some applications of the new scale, its limitations, and directions for future research.

Theoretical background Culture represents a set of shared knowledge and implicit theories about the world including beliefs, values, attitudes, and other constructs needed to interpret and navigate various environments (Hong et al. 2000). Cultural knowledge forms the basis for a person’s social reality; and the rules and guidelines that define this reality are passed on during child rearing and are reinforced by interactions with others (Lau et al. 2001). Interest in the influence of culture on consumer behavior has increased and broadened considerably, spurred by the recent globalization of markets and diversification of consumer segments (Douglas and Craig 1997). However, despite calls for greater rigor (e.g., Maheswaran and Shavitt 2000), we still lack robust crosscultural conceptual frameworks and reliable, valid scales with cross-cultural measurement equivalence (Bearden et al. 2006a; Harb and Smith 2008; Shavitt et al. 2006; Soares et al. 2007). Hofstede’s (1980, 2001) cultural framework provides a useful theoretical foundation to explore cross-cultural differences in consumer behavior. Hofstede conducted his survey way back in 1967 and 1971 with 116,000 employees of a single organization (IBM) in 40 countries and it included 32 items described as work-related goals or values (Hofstede 1991). Using factor analysis on the average national scores for each work-related value, he found four dimensions and named these individualismcollectivism, power distance, masculinity-femininity, and uncertainty avoidance. Based on his work with Bond (1988), he later added long vs. short-term orientation (called Confucian dynamism at first) as the fifth cultural dimension.

J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2010) 38:787–806

Most early research on cross-cultural consumer behavior and international business assumed Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture to be applicable even at an individual level, hence committing what has been termed as ‘ecological fallacy’ (Bond 2002). Specifically, these studies simply used the nation scores on Hofstede’s factors to predict cross-cultural differences in consumer attitudes and behavior (e.g., Albers-Miller and Gelb 1996; Birgelen et al. 2002; Laroche et al. 2004; Sivakumar and Nakata 2001; Steenkamp et al. 1999). However, nation-level constructs may not fully represent the diversity in the cultural orientations of the citizens of a country since they may not possess the same level of their national cultural characteristics (Bond 2002; Hofstede 1991; Leung 1989). For example, European Americans are not necessarily more individualistic than African Americans, or Latin Americans, and not less collectivistic than Japanese or Koreans (Oyserman et al. 2002a). In fact, most societies have at least some representation of both individualistic and collectivistic worldviews, and they deal with the individual- and collective-oriented value choices separately (Schwartz 1994). As a result, the human mind may have adapted to think in both ways depending on the situational requirements (Oyserman et al. 2002b). In other words, several non-cultural factors (e.g., demographic, socio-economic, and environmental), which are not controlled in many of these studies, may provide an alternative explanation for the differences between samples from different countries (Blodgett et al. 2006). In fact, Hofstede’s 32-item original scale also lacks sufficient construct validity when applied to an individual context (Blodgett et al. 2008). Similar concerns exist about the construct validity and reliability of Hofstede’s (1994) Values Survey Module (Spector et al. 2001). Hence, using nation-level scores on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to predict consumer behavior may be problematic (Bearden et al. 2006a). Some studies use a few items from Hofstede’s original 32-item scale and his VSM 94 scales reflecting workrelated values (e.g., Donthu and Yoo 1998; Dorfman and Howell 1988; Erdem et al. 2006; Furrer et al. 2000; Hui 1988; Jung and Kellaris 2006; Lee and Lim 2008). However, none of these studies provide any evidence of the content or construct validity of these reduced or adapted scales or their cross-cultural measurement equivalence across samples drawn from different countries. Hence, despite reporting high reliabilities of these scales and significant findings about their focal relationships, it is not clear if these studies actually measure the relevant cultural dimensions and if the observed effects indeed reflect the influence of these cultural dimensions, as expected. Among all these scales, the CVSCALE (Donthu and Yoo 1998) seems most popular and reliable (Patterson et al.


2006; Soares et al. 2007; Yoo and Donthu 2005). However, a closer look reveals its many limitations. First, it measures only the collectivism dimension and treats individualism as its opposite; whereas these two are distinct cultural dimensions and should be measured separately (Oyserman et al. 2002a). Second, most of the items in CVSCALE reflect social norms about Hofstede’s (1991) cultural dimensions rather than a mix of personal values and cultural orientations, as recommended (Oyserman 2006; Shavitt et al. 2006). Third, Donthu and Yoo (1998) do not provide any evidence of the construct validity or crosscultural measurement equivalence of the CVSCALE, thus limiting its appeal. From the above discussion, it is clear that there is no consensus on the conceptual and operational definitions of individual-level personal cultural orientations, and how these are different from the Hofstede’s nation-level cultural dimensions. Next, the author addresses this gap by reviewing the relevant cross-cultural psychology and consumer behavior literature to reconceptualize Hofstede’s five cultural factors as ten personal cultural orientations. Individualism–Collectivism (IND-COL) In individualistic cultures “the ties between individuals are loose; everyone is expected to look after him/herself and his/her immediate family only”; whereas people in collectivistic cultures “from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, which throughout people’s lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty” (Hofstede 2001; p. 225). Individualism relates with values such as power, achievement, and hedonism; and collectivism with benevolence, tradition, and conformity (Schwartz et al. 2001). Individualists prefer to act independently rather than as members of groups, and with a strong self-concept and sense of freedom, they develop greater autonomy and personal achievement (Oyserman et al. 2002a). In contrast, collectivists see themselves as part of one or more ingroups and are willing to give priority to the goals of these in-groups over their own personal goals. Most studies on cross-cultural consumer behavior explore either IND or COL, based on Hofstede’s (1980) observation that these two may be opposite of each other. However, people may maintain both independent and interdependent sense of self, and each of these may activate in different situations (Markus and Kitayama 1991). Hence, IND and COL may not represent two ends of a continuum and may well be orthogonal (Oyserman 2006). In fact, Triandis et al. (1985) extend the IND-COL theory from the culture (group) to the individual level, using the terms idiocentrism (based on IND) and allocentrism (based on COL) to recognize that every individual has both these tendencies to some extent. Allocentrism represents interdependent selves, which focus on communal goals, norms,

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obligations, and duties and emphasize maintaining relationships. In contrast, idiocentrism represents independent selves, which focus on personal goals, attitudes, needs, and rights and emphasize cost-benefit analysis of relationships (Markus and Kitayama 1991). Triandis et al. (1985) also develop a 32-item self-report scale to measure idiocentric and allocentric tendencies at individual level. Several studies use this idiocentrism–allocentrism scale to study cross-cultural differences including the impact of past experience, expectations, and affordability on purchase intentions (Lee 2000), consumer values and lifestyles (Dutta-Bergman and Wells 2002), value-attitude relations (Gregory et al. 2002), and the use of information sources to form service expectations (Laroche et al. 2004). However, some of these studies use only a few items from this scale, without discussing how it may affect its content validity. More importantly, none of these studies report any efforts to establish the measurement invariance of this scale, despite using it with consumers from diverse cultural backgrounds in countries around the world. Singelis (1994) introduced the 24-item Self-Construal Scale to measure the thoughts, feelings and actions, associated with independent and interdependent selfconstruals (Markus and Kitayama 1991). Others use this scale to study the influence of culture on consumer responses to personalization (Kramer et al. 2007), and compliance behavior (Schouten 2008), and also explore its psychometric properties (Wang 2000), mostly finding that it has poor construct and predictive validity. Finally, Singelis et al. (1995) introduced a 32-item scale, reduced by Triandis and Gelfand (1998) to 16-items, to measure the IND and COL using horizontal and vertical distinctions. Most studies only use parts of this scale to explore cross-cultural differences in consumers’ ethical beliefs (Chiou and Pan 2008), propensity to voice complaints (Chelminski and Coulter 2007b), and consumer self-confidence (Chelminski and Coulter 2007a); hence they do not provide any evidence of its overall validity and reliability. Some find it better than Hofstede’s VSM 94 (Bearden et al. 2006a) and Triandis et al.’s SCS (Kramer et al. 2007), whereas others find problems with the discriminant validity of its horizontal–vertical dimension (Li and Aksoy 2007). From the above evidence, it seems that although IND and COL may have significantly different implications for the self-concept, well-being, attribution style, and relationality, most people may possess at least some level of both these cultural values (Oyserman et al. 2002b). Hence, this paper presents IND and COL as two negatively correlated dimensions, independence (IND) and interdependence (INT), to represent the differences in the dominant selfconstruals (Markus and Kitayama 1991), and personal cultural values (Bond 1988; Schwartz 1992).

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Specifically, this paper defines IND as a personal cultural orientation associated with acting independently, a strong self-concept, a sense of freedom, autonomy, and personal achievement; and INT as a personal cultural orientations associated with acting as a part of one or more in-groups, a strong group identity, a sense of belongingness, reliance on others, giving importance to group-goals over own individual goals, and collective achievement. Using other cultural perspectives besides Hofstede’s, the paper proposes that the personal cultural orientation IND may be similar to cultural values such as competence (Bond 1988), individualism and achievement (Trompenaars 1993), self-direction and hedonism (Schwartz 1994), and autonomy (Steenkamp 2001); whereas INT may relate with cultural values such as cultural inwardness, social reliability and morality (Bond 1988), benevolence and conformity (Schwartz 1994), and universalism (Smith et al. 1996). Thus, this paper integrates various sets of similar cultural values into two distinct constructs, IND and INT. Power Distance (PDI) PDI is the “extent to which the less powerful members of a society expect and accept that power is distributed unequally”, in terms of social status, respect, wealth, rights and privileges (Hofstede 2001; p. 98). Low PDI cultures minimize the inequalities among individuals in terms of social status, privileges and status symbols; high PDI cultures emphasize prestige, wealth, and power and are more likely to accept a power hierarchy, tight control, vertical top-down communication, and even discrimination based on age, gender, hometown, family, social class, school, education level, or job positions (Yoo and Donthu 2005). Cultures with high power distance highlight the importance of ‘Face’, which refers to social and professional position, reputation, and self image (Hofstede 2001). Most high PDI cultures have evolved from feudal societies in which one’s position in the social hierarchy reflects through the concept of face and loss of face may have disastrous personal consequences. As a result, people in such cultures are always under strong social pressure to meet the expectation of others in order to maintain face (Hu et al. 2008). Horizontal–vertical (HV) dimensions distinguish cultures based on the extent to which they value and emphasize power and equality, two integral elements of power distance; with the horizontal axis representing equality and vertical axis hierarchy (Oyserman 2006). Horizontal cultures are structurally egalitarian with their members accepting interdependence and equal status for all, and vertical cultures are hierarchical with members accepting inequality and acknowledging the importance of social rank or status (Triandis and Gelfand 1998).


Prior research explores the influence of HV dimension cross-cultural consumer behavior such as the country-oforigin effects (Gürhan-Canli and Maheswaran 2000), personal values, advertising and consumer persuasion, self-presentational patterns, and gender differences (Shavitt et al. 2006). Triandis and Gelfand (1998) introduce the 16item Horizontal–Vertical Individualism–Collectivism scale, a modified version of the 32-item scale introduced earlier by Singelis et al. (1995), conceptualizing IND-COL as multi-dimensional constructs. Some find this scale reliable (Bearden et al. 2006a; Shavitt et al. 2006); but others question its dimensionality and measurement equivalence (Li and Aksoy 2007). Combining power distance as a horizontal/vertical axis within the IND-COL framework may not fully represent the difference in power and equality, by not allowing a disentangling of the separate effects of power and equality from those of individualism or collectivism (Oyserman 2006). Unsurprisingly, collectivism correlates strongly with the vertical dimension in many studies (Shavitt et al. 2006). Moreover, current measures of vertical and horizontal dimensions do not seem to adequately capture the differences in power levels (Oyserman 2006). To address these concerns, this paper represents Hofstede’s PDI factor as two positively correlated dimensions, power (POW) and social inequality (IEQ); wherein POW represents the extent to which individuals accept differences in the power wielded by various members in any organization; and IEQ represents the degree of inequality among people in a society which the individual accepts as normal (Taras et al. 2009). In other words, POW defines how people relate to authority, whereas IEQ is concerned with hierarchy vs. egalitarianism (Schwartz 1994). Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) UAI describes “the extent to which people feel threatened by ambiguous or an unknown situations” (Hofstede 2001; p. 161). Higher UAI relates with a desire for reduction of ambiguity and risk, with a need for predictability, written explicit rules, structured situations; whereas lower UAI associates with a tolerance for ambiguity and propensity to engage in risk taking (Hofstede 2001). Individuals with higher UAI are active, emotional, and security-seekers; they also tend to accept uncertainty without much discomfort, and show greater tolerance for opinions and behaviors different from their own. In contrast, individuals with lower UAI are contemplative, less emotional, and risk-takers; and they have a greater need to control the environment, events, and situations in their personal lives. In high UAI cultures, individuals prefer to maintain clarity and stick to the status quo, in comparison to low UAI cultures where individuals are more likely to challenge their belief system with new ideas and innovative behaviors


(de Mooij and Hofstede 2002). UAI influences advertising appeals (Albers-Miller and Gelb 1996), consumer innovativeness (Steenkamp et al. 1999), country-of-origin effects (Lee et al. 2007), interpersonal information seeking (Dawar et al. 1996), relationships among different types of involvement (Broderick 2007), service evaluations (Voss et al. 2004), and procedural justice perceptions about service recovery (Patterson et al. 2006). However, many of these studies use national scores for UAI and others consider it as a unidimensional construct without drawing a distinction between cultural orientations towards risk and ambiguity. UAI consists of two distinct aspects—risk avoidance, the degree to which individuals feel uncomfortable with taking risks (Bontempo et al. 1997; Keh and Sun 2008); and intolerance of ambiguity, the degree to which individuals feel uncomfortable when confronted with ambiguity (de Mooij and Hofstede 2002). In view of these differences, this paper represents UAI as two positively correlated dimensions, risk aversion (RSK) and ambiguity intolerance (AMB), based on prior research (e.g., Grenier et al. 2005), wherein RSK is the extent to which people are reluctant to take risk or make risky decisions, and AMB is the degree to which people can tolerate ambiguity and uncertain situations. Masculinity–Femininity (MAS) MAS expresses “the extent to which the dominant values in society are ‘masculine’, that is, assertiveness, the acquisition of money and things, and not caring for others, the quality of life, or people” (Hofstede 2001; p. 297). Masculine societies are aggressive and competitive, valuing achievement and success; feminine societies are modest and nurturing, valuing care for others and quality of life (Hofstede 2001). Masculine consumers emphasize differentiated gender roles, performance, ambition, and independence; feminine consumers accept fluid gender roles and are interdependent. Masculine individuals tend to be confrontational, preferring threats and accusations when challenged; feminine individuals tend to be more harmonious, preferring mediation, negotiation, and peaceful co-existence (Leung 1987). Masculinity–femininity cultural orientation affects a person’s self-concept; masculinity represents a preference for achievement, assertiveness, and material success; femininity relates with preference for relationships, modesty, caring for others, and quality of life (Hofstede 2001). High masculinity associates with the dominance of self-ego and status cues resulting in prevalence of symbolic consumption (de Mooij and Hofstede 2002), preference for emotional and hedonic appeals (Tsikriktsis 2002), and purchase of expensive luxury products and conspicuous consumption to demonstrate their material success (Steenkamp et al. 1999).

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MAS also has a significant influence on sex-role portrayals in advertising (Milner and Collins 1998), consumer innovativeness (van Everdingen and Waarts 2003), relationships among different types of involvement (Broderick 2007), and service evaluations (Birgelen et al. 2002). Recent research argues that masculinity and femininity may not be the opposite ends of a continuum as suggested by Hofstede (1980); instead these may be two distinct dimensions of a common cultural orientation (Chang 2006). In fact, masculine and feminine identities may also coexist in varying degrees within the same individual (Spence 1993; Stern et al. 1987). Moreover, Hofstede’s definition of femininity as the opposite of masculinity does not explain how feminine cultures have more equal gender roles. In other words, Hofstede’s cultural framework seems to confound the issue of masculinity– femininity with gender equality. Based on the above, this paper reconceptualizes Hofstede’s masculinity–femininity factor as two independent dimensions, masculinity (MAS) and gender equality (GEQ). MAS represents the expression of assertiveness, self-confidence, aggression, and ambition; whereas GEQ is the extent to which people perceive men and women as equal in terms of social roles, capabilities, rights, and responsibilities (Schwartz and Rubel-Lifschitz 2009). MAS may relate positively with mastery and negatively with harmony (Schwartz 1994) and human heartedness (Bond 1988). Long- vs. Short-term Orientation (LTO) Initially called Confucian dynamism (Bond 1988; Hofstede and Bond 1988), long-term orientation is the “fostering of virtues oriented towards future rewards, in particular, perseverance and thrift” (Hofstede 2001; p. 359); short-term orientation relates with stability, saving face, respect for tradition, and focus on the past or the present (Donthu and Yoo 1998). Oriental societies are more long-term oriented, influenced by the Confucian ethics including hard work, thrift, nonmaterialism, benevolence, morality, and social consciousness; whereas Western societies are relatively short-term oriented, with a focus on immediate gratification rather than waiting for future rewards (Hofstede 2001). Long-term orientation relates with the extent to which a society exhibits a pragmatic, future-oriented perspective rather than a conventional historic or short-term perspective (Hofstede 2001). Consumers with long-term orientation tend to prefer well-known national and global brands because they may be interested in forming a long-term relationship with these brands; whereas short-term oriented consumers prefer private labels because they may look for the short-term and immediate benefit of lower prices (de Mooij and Hofstede 2002). Long-term oriented consumers are finan-

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cially more responsible, as evident from their lower usage of credit cards and higher savings rates; and they are also more loyal and innovative (Soares et al. 2007). Long-term oriented people are dynamic in thinking, accepting radical changes; coupled with Confucian ethics of hard work and thrift, it may explain the economic success of Japan and other newly industrialized Asian countries (Franke et al. 1991). Finally, studies show that it influences consumer innovativeness (van Everdingen and Waarts 2003), customer complaint behavior (Hui and Au 2001), and reactions to service failure (Poon et al. 2004). Prior research considers respect for tradition as a shortterm value and persistence as a long-term value. However, some argue that the values included in the original definition of Confucian Dynamism (i.e., planning, respect for tradition, hard work for future benefit, and perseverance) are all long-term values (Bearden et al. 2006b). Accordingly, they redefine LTO as the “cultural value of viewing time holistically, valuing both the past and the future, rather than deeming actions important only for their effects in the here and now or the short term”. They also identify two dimensions of LTO (tradition and planning) and develop a scale to measure them. However, they do not provide conceptual definitions of these sub-dimensions. A closer look at the items used to measure these two sub-dimensions shows that the planning dimension includes items related to future-orientation (e.g., ‘I work hard for success in the future’) and perseverance (‘Persistence is important for me’), which do not seem to directly relate with planning per se. Hence, this paper defines tradition (TRD) and prudence (PRU) as two positively correlated dimensions to represent Hofstede’s long-term orientation (or, Confucian dynamism) factor. The author proposes the term ‘prudence’ instead of ‘planning’, because it covers planning, perseverance as well as future-orientation (Puri 1996). Specifically, he defines TRD as a personal cultural orientation representing respect for traditional values including hard work, non-materialism, benevolence, social consciousness, morality, and respect for one’s heritage (Bond 1988); and PRU as a personal cultural orientation that represents planning, perseverance, thrift, and future orientation (Puri 1996).

Scale development Personal cultural orientations consist of shared cultural values and norms, as well as personal beliefs based on unique individual experiences, hence there are theoretical reasons to expect a conceptual link between national level and individual level cultural values (Oyserman et al. 2002a). Hofstede assumes his cultural dimensions as bi-


polar (opposite ends of a continuum), however others suggest a more complex multi-dimensional structure for the individual-level measures of cultural orientations such as the horizontal–vertical individualism–collectivism (Triandis and Gelfand 1998), and long-term orientation scales (Bearden et al. 2006a). This paper proposes a multi-dimensional structure for Hofstede’s five cultural factors, using the dimensions independence (IND) and interdependence (INT) for INDCOL, power (POW) and social inequality (IEQ) for PDI, masculinity (MAS) and gender equality (GEQ) for MAS, risk aversion (RSK) and ambiguity intolerance (AMB) for UAI, and tradition (TRD) and prudence (PRU) for LTO. Based on an extensive review of the cross-cultural psychology and consumer behavior literature covering more than 200 papers published during 1980–2009, supplemented with 50 in-depth interviews with individuals from diverse cultures, the author generated an initial pool of 96 items reflecting different aspects of personal cultural orientations. Next, he evaluated the face and content validity of these items. Four independent judges (marketing professors) with different cultural backgrounds (ethnic Chinese, Asian Indian, African American, and Caucasian European) examined the conceptual definitions of all the dimensions of personal cultural orientations and rated each of the 96 items in the initial pool using a 3-point scale (1 = not at all, 2 = somewhat, and 3 = completely representative) for the extent to which it represented at least one of the dimensions. To assess the face validity, the author looked for items that were rated by at least one of the judges as one (not at all representative) for all the ten dimensions (Bearden et al. 1989). The author found 24 such items; for example, ‘Having a lively imagination is important to me’, ‘I value being in good health above everything’, ‘I respect people who are modest about themselves’, ‘If my brother or sister fails, I feel responsible’, ‘Emotions should not be shown’, ‘Willingness to subordinate oneself for a purpose is normal’, and ‘Money and material things are important’. Since all these items seem to reflect general attitudes or beliefs about personal ability or social norms unrelated to the cultural orientations, the author dropped them for their lack of face validity. Next, he assessed content validity by first looking for items rated as two or above for more than one dimension, because such overlap will indicate ambiguity in their conceptual meaning. However there were no such items. He then added the scores assigned by all the judges to each item for a specific dimension to arrive at a sum-score and looked for items with a sum-score lower than eight, as these were not considered at least somewhat representative on an average by all the four judges (Hardesty and Bearden 2004).


The author found 14 such items including ‘I act the same way at home that I do at school (or work)’ for IND; ‘I would offer my seat in a bus to my professor (or my boss)’ for INT; ‘People in higher positions should avoid social interaction with people in lower positions’ for POW; ‘There should be, and there is to some extent, interdependencies between less and more powerful people’ for IEQ; ‘Standardized work procedures are helpful’ for AMB; ‘Fear of ambiguous situations and of unfamiliar risks is normal’ for RSK; and ‘Solving difficult problems usually requires an active, forcible approach, which is typical of men’ for MAS etc. According to at least one of the judges, these items did not even somewhat represent the relevant dimension; hence the author dropped them. Thus, 58 items remained (i.e., 5–6 items for each dimension). The author further refined these items to develop the new scale and to assess its psychometric properties using best practices in scale development, as described in the next section.

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(>.40). Hence, as advised by Nunnally (1978), the author omitted these items. However, before eliminating these items, the author showed all these items to the four judges used earlier, to ensure that it will not lead to any loss in the face and content validity of the ten personal cultural orientations based on their conceptual definitions. The remaining 48 items load on ten factors as expected, explaining 63.5% variance in the data; thus supporting the multi-dimensional conceptualization of cultural values. Each factor consists of four to five items, which seem to be reliable measures (sub-scales) of the ten cultural orientations, with Cronbach’s alpha (α) values ranging from .72 to .85. The average scores for each sub-scale are also normally distributed and show adequate variance. The inclusion of four to five items per factor ensures parsimony of scale items to minimize respondent fatigue when answering long questionnaires (Clark and Watson 1995). Table 1 shows all the scale items and their psychometric properties.

Study 1—scale refinement and purification Study 2—scale validation Sample and procedure The author used a sample of 588 adult shoppers (53% males, average age 32.3 years) consisting of both locals and foreigners recruited using the mall-intercept approach in various shopping malls all over Hong Kong. Although classified as a collectivistic, high power distance, and masculine culture with low uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede 2001), Hong Kong is also a multi-cultural society, a popular destination for tourists, and a thriving business metropolis attracting companies and employees from all over the world (Hong et al. 2000). Hence, it allows the study of consumers with a wide range of cultural orientations, making it a good choice for this study. The author developed the questionnaire in English and created a Chinese version with help from bilingual graduate students, using the translation-back translation procedure (Brislin 1970). He administered the 58 items interspersed randomly throughout the questionnaire using a 7-point Likert scale (with values ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). Data analysis The author assessed the psychometric properties of the new scale using Principal Components Analysis with Promax rotation because he expected some factors to be correlated with each other. The factor analysis shows ten factors that explain 69.7% variance in the data; however, ten items have low corrected item-total correlations (