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Culture study in international marketing: a critical review and suggestions for future research
Attila Yaprak
School of Business Administration, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a critical review of culture study streams in international marketing and offer suggestions for future development. Design/methodology/approach A comprehensive review of earlier and current approaches to culture study in international marketing is offered. Shortcomings of earlier studies are highlighted and suggestions for remedies are presented. Future research suggestions are also offered. Findings Five streams of earlier studies and their shortcomings are presented, along with four avenues for future research. Practical implications More sharply framed culture study will lead to a deeper understanding of cultures role in targeting, segmentation, and positioning and strategy formulation by scholars and managers of international marketing. Originality/value The paper integrates a large body of research in an important research area in international marketing and offers future research directions. Keywords Cultural studies, International marketing, Marketing Paper type Literature review

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Introduction Ever since Halls (1960), introduction of culture as the silent language in overseas business, the study of culture, often dened broadly as national culture, has fascinated scholars and managers of international business for four decades. The contributions of the earlier pioneers of culture study in business, Lee (1966) and Hall (1970) among them, cast environmental analysis into international business as an essential ingredient in understanding and analyzing foreign markets. But extensive culture study in international business research and practice began in earnest during the 1980s, after Hofstedes (1980, 1983) pioneering work in classifying national cultures was published, and gained acceptance as the framework to apply in analyzing, and understanding, national cultures. As this framework rose to prominence in culture study in the 1990s, international business researchers learned from developments in cognate disciplines, such as anthropology (Levine, 1984; Chapman, 1997; DIribarne, 1997; Bond et al., 2004), sociology (Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz and Bilsky, 1990) and organizational behavior (Smircich and Stubbart, 1985; Hatch, 1993; Schultz and Hatch, 1996; Hatch and Schultz, 2002), and enriched their study of culture with increasing sophistication. For example, culture study was expanded to include deeper analysis of the content and structure
The author thanks Professors Julia Gluesing, Research Professor at Wayne State University and David Grifth, Professor of Marketing at Michigan State University and Editor of this Special Issue, and two anonymous reviewers of the International Marketing Review for their valuable comments in the earlier development of this paper.
International Marketing Review Vol. 25 No. 2, 2008 pp. 215-229 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0265-1335 DOI 10.1108/02651330810866290

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of human values (Schwartz and Bilsky, 1990) and began to be viewed through anthropological and sociological lenses (Clark, 1990; Inglehart and Baker, 2000). The application of culture study in international marketing found expression in the 1970s and 1980s in primarily country of origin studies (see Papadopoulos and Heslop, 2003, for a review), but truly ourished in this eld since the 1990s. For example, Nakata (2003) reports that from 1990 to 1995, 25 percent of international marketing articles published in the leading scholarly journals in international marketing incorporated culture, but this percentage rose to 44 percent from 1995 to 2000; suggesting that culture study may have become a leading theory in international marketing research. Yet, as Nakata (2003) laments, many, if not most, of these studies have treated culture theory as static, trait theory; that is, where every society is described by its intensity along a particular societal and/or personality trait, such as individualism and collectivism when, in fact, many studies show that culture is a dynamic, complex phenomenon. Indeed, Osland and Bird (2000) also lament that, culture study in international marketing needs to advance beyond sophisticated stereotyping toward cultural sense-making in context. In a comprehensive review of culture and international business, Leung et al. (2005) argue in a similar vein that culture study needs to be enhanced to include newer approaches, such as experimental methods, to stay current in light of the cultural convergence and divergence patterns that are emerging as part of, and sometimes as a response to, the globalization of markets and competition. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the evolution of culture study in international marketing to paint a picture of how culture has been studied in earlier research, how it is being studied currently, and how it might be studied in the future to help in more accurately predicting behavioral change in individuals and rms as they operate in different markets. As Nakata (2003) argues, international marketing researchers need to generate more focused discussion on culture theory, per se, within their eld to help develop a more organic view of culture. She further argues that:
[. . .] there is need for more literature reviews aimed at evaluation, discussion and promotion of theory to create new opportunities that would engender rich and useful discourse, furthering theoretical development and thereby the accumulation of knowledge in international marketing (Nakata, 2003, pp. 222-3).

This paper is in response to this call, and is organized as follows. After discussing the role of culture in international business, we offer a critical review of culture study in international marketing to date. We then discuss the shortcomings found in earlier studies and detail their remedies. We conclude with a discussion about how culture might be studied in the future and offer suggestions for research directions and managerial applications. The role of culture in international business and marketing Denitions, nature as a nested framework, and role in strategy performance Culture has been dened in the international marketing literature through many conceptualizations. While Leung et al.s (2005) denition of culture broadly as the values, beliefs, norms, and behavioral patterns of a national group and House et al.s (2004) denition as embedded values (the way things should be done) and practices (the way things are done) in a society exemplify culture conceptualizations at the national/societal level, Hofstedes (2001) view of it as the software of the mind or collective programming

of the mind that distinguishes one group of people from another exemplies culture conceptualizations at the cognitive, individual level. Perhaps, Nakata and Huangs (2002) denition of culture as that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society is the view that is most appropriate in international marketing as it is this view that captures the essence of culture as that holistic system of individual, organizational, and social interactions that extract and give back energy to the symbolic, material, and ideological frameworks that integrate a group and frame the variability and distinctiveness that denes that group. Since markets possess and are governed by individual and societal undercurrents that uniquely frame them (Nakata and Huang, 2002), a synthesized conceptualization, such as this one seems to offer the most promising framing of culture for international marketing practice. While culture has often been studied at the national level Hofstede (1983), Leung et al. (2005) and House et al. (2004) underscore its multiple-level nature and argue that it would need to be viewed as a construct consisting of various levels nested within each other to yield promising outcomes for research and practice. Leung et al. (2005) suggest, for instance, that culture study could range from the most macro level (i.e. global culture) through national, industrial, and organizational levels, to cultural values that are represented in the self at the individual level. They suggest that at the global level, culture could be viewed as created by global networks and institutions that cross national and cultural borders; at the national level, nested organizations and networks embedded in local cultures can be seen as composing national culture; and at the most micro level, individuals, who through processes of socialization, could be viewed as acquiring the cultural values transmitted to them from higher levels of culture, making up personal values. Leung et al. (2005) further suggest that there will be interplay among these levels; while part of the individuals self will develop in relation to global culture, part of it will remain anchored in local culture. They suggest that the extent to which this bi-cultural identity will develop will depend on continuing subtractive (assimilation) and additive (integration) processes. Given that marketing is concerned with facilitating exchanges that provide superior value to both the consumer and the marketer, understanding this complex nature of consumer identity and how it may affect consumer behavior and marketing strategy performance could create a difcult challenge to the international marketer. Thus, a thorough understanding of culture is a necessary ingredient in the development of effective marketing strategy and superior marketing performance. Earlier conceptualizations of culture in international marketing Earlier international marketing studies that incorporated culture into research did so through validating, trait-like, static cultural dimensions (Nakata, 2003). Most of these studies applied Hofstedes (1980, 1983), or others frameworks (Schwartz and Bilsky, 1990; Hall, 1970) to marketing phenomena and attempted to validate that frameworks dimensions in marketing and management contexts. For example, Nakata and Sivakumar (1996) developed a conceptual model of the relationship between new product development and Hoftstedes ve dimensions of national culture, and generated propositions for additional research on this relationship. In a similar study, Nakata and Sivakumar (2001) developed a conceptual exploration of how the marketing concept may be instituted within global organizations and the role of national culture on that process.

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They viewed national culture, dened through Hoftstedes dimensions, as an antecedent to effectively instituting the marketing concept in various national settings and concluded that the subsidiaries of multinational enterprises have unique strengths and weaknesses that are rooted in their national cultures which can be activated by the rm for superior competitive advantage in different cultural settings. Focusing on Hofstedes individualism dimension and examining the impact of attitudinal and behavioral variables on persuasion in Western and non-Western cultural environments, Aaker and Maheshwaran (1997) found that some of these constructs could be generalized across cultures while others could not; that is, for some constructs culture did matter in persuasion. In a study on foreign market entry mode choice, Kogut and Singh (1988) explored the relationship between national culture and entry mode selection through the application of Hofstedes dimensions and found that rms from countries characterized by relatively high-uncertainty avoidance in their organizational practices preferred joint ventures or greeneld investments over acquisitions as they ventured into foreign markets. Their ndings underscored the validity of the view that entry mode choice is inuenced by cultural factors and validated the usefulness of Hofstedes classication of cultures, at least along the uncertainty avoidance dimension. In similar fashion, Ralston et al. (1997) examined the impact of national culture and economic ideology on managerial work values in four national cultures using the Schwartz value survey. Their ndings supported the notion that national culture and economic ideology both impacted work values in China, Japan, Russia and the USA, but to only a certain degree, cross-vergence, that is, a mutual process of values assimilation, rather than convergence or divergence of work values, was dominant. In yet another study in this genre of research, Kim (1998)empirically examined the applicability of Halls (1970) high vs low-context communication dimension in cultural analysis in Chinese, Korean, and American samples. They discovered that these national cultures varied along Halls context dimension; specically, the Chinese and the Korean samples were high-context in contrast to the American sample which was low-context, underscoring, again, that culture, as measured through dimensionalizing frameworks, mattered. While these studies served as examples of the nature of the use of Hofstedes and others dimensions in trait-like fashion, their ndings needed to be evaluated with caution, even when based on empirical analysis. As Nakata (2003) has argued, this is because the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of these frameworks may be questionable due a number of shortcomings in the assumptions of this type of static culture theory. Nakata (2003, pp. 212-19)offers four such shortcomings in this context. First, culture is cast in these frameworks as internally consistent (its dimensions are coherent and convergent rather than conicting) and externally comprehensible (unied cultural patterns make it understandable). In fact, while societies may have a collective conscience, members of a society may respond differently to events in different circumstances. That is, context does matter; sophisticated stereotyping that these applications typically lead to may be insufcient in sense-making about a culture (Osland and Bird, 2000). Second, culture is assumed to be stable and perpetual in these frameworks. As Nakata (2003) argues, however, while cultural characteristics have been shown to be typically enduring, they also undergo construction and reconstruction as societies change their priorities, loyalties, and orientations. As she also underscores, cultures do construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct as individuals making up a culture continuously modify generally held perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, values,

and behaviors in light of societal and global changes. Thus, cultures should not be measured under the assumptions of permanence. Third, when culture is viewed as cognition, such as a collective programming of the mind, the cognitions and interpretations, that is, the perceptions, values and beliefs of individuals that make up a society, are seen as the deepest anchors of that culture (Inglehart and Baker, 2000). As Nakata (2003) points out, however, while cognition may be important, the behavior of individuals might be more important in dening culture; while in the short run, cognition may guide behavior, in the long run, behavior may guide and shape ideas. Fourth, culture is viewed to be bounded by national borders in these frameworks. Again, while this assumption is reasonable, as Nakata (2003) argues, many nations contain several sub-cultures in them that blend, interact, and compete with one another, are moved by different motivational drivers, and perform at different levels of performance. There is evidence to support this assertion. For example, Lenartowitz and Roth (2001) show that a subculture effect is present in motivational domains as well as business performance in four regional subcultures in Brazil. Through robust results achieved from multiple comparisons, they show that signicant subculture effects exist among Brazilian subcultures in terms of such motivational variables as achievement, restrictive conformity, security and self direction, and outcome variables such as business performance. Thus, it makes more sense to study subcultures within national cultures to arrive at a more meaningful understanding of culture (Lenartowitz and Roth, 1999). More recent conceptualizations of culture in international marketing In the more recent conceptualizations of culture in international marketing, researchers continued to apply the dimensionalizing frameworks, such as Hofstedes, to marketing phenomena but with more robust analyses and in emerging marketing domains. They also rened these frameworks and applied them in multiple-context studies. In the rst stream of these studies, for example, Hewett et al. (2006) found that national culture did inuence buyer-seller relationship strength in industrial marketing contexts, and corporate culture, a by-product of national culture, moderated the link between relationship strength and repurchase intentions. That is, culture, as measured through Hoftstedes dimensions, mattered. In a similar study, Money et al. (1998) examined how national culture might affect referral behavior in advertising settings and found that national culture did impact the referral sources Japanese and American rms consulted in industrial settings, again underscoring that culture mattered. In the context of cross-national consumer behavior, Madden et al. (2000) found that some color combinations evoked similar and other combinations evoked different, interpretations among consumers in cultural settings, again suggesting that culture mattered, at least to some degree, in managing and sustaining brand and corporate images across eight markets. In similar fashion, Briley and Aaker (2006) showed that national culture-based differences did matter in consumer persuasion and information processing among North American and Chinese consumers, although cultures effect was not constant; personal reections rather than culture-based rules emerged in some evaluative judgments. Applying Hofstedes framework in robust fashion on data from North American and Chinese consumers, Teng and Laroche (2006) found that culturally-congruent appeals embedded in advertisements created more favorable responses than culturally incongruent appeals, suggesting, again, that cultural congruence mattered in advertising strategy. In investigating the impact of

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anti-smoking messages on teenagers in nine culturally diverse countries, Reardon et al. (2006) found that teenagers with high-uncertainty avoidance responded more favorably to loss-framed advertisements then to benet-framed promotion while the opposite held true for those with low-uncertainty avoidance. In similar fashion, Paul et al. (2006) applied Hofstedes framework to investigating the relationship between the cultural values and marketing ethics in the USA and India and found that these societies differed in how they responded to ethical dilemmas, again underscoring, like the previous studies, that national culture mattered. Finally, in the context of marketing strategy, Grifth et al. (2006) applied Hoftstedes framework to explore differences in the relationships between relationship resources (i.e. trust, commitment), knowledge resources (i.e. information sharing, problem resolution), and the linkages between these resources cross- and inter-culturally from the perspective of American and Japanese rms. Their ndings showed that national culture inuenced relationship resources and the linkage between relationship and knowledge resources more signicantly in the Japanese, than in the American rms, underscoring the inuence of national culture, as dened by Hofstedes framework. In similar fashion, Sanchez-Peinado et al. (2007) found in their study on the linkage between international strategy and entry mode choice in service rms that the cultural distance between the host and the home countries affected the control modes rms selected in entering foreign markets, underscoring, again, that the degree of cultural similarity mattered in entry mode choice. In contrast to these ndings, however, Mitra and Golder (2002) found, through the application of Hofstedes and Kogut and Singhs frameworks, that cultural similarity between markets was not a signicant factor in the foreign market entries of American multinationals, although near-market knowledge was. In the second stream, researchers engaged in developing newer frameworks based on research in multiple countries, and further revised and claried Hofstedes and others dimensional frameworks. For example, through four separate studies, Triandis and Gelfand (1998) showed that the individualism-collectivism dimension was, in fact, a polythetic construct composed of horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism, and Hirschman (2003) developed rugged individualism, a rened version of Hofstedes individualism construct, in her work on advertising. Through multiple-country studies, House et al. (2004), Gupta and House (2004), Bond et al. (2004) and Leung et al. (2002) helped develop rened frameworks composed of newer or re-constructed facets to the popular dimensional frameworks, such as the redenition of collectivism as institutional and in-group collectivism; future, humane, and performance orientations; gender egalitarianism and assertiveness (House et al., 2004); and dynamic externality and societal cynicism (Bond et al., 2004). This was, to some extent, the result of developments in cognitive psychology, where culture was viewed as represented by cognitive structures and processes that were sensitive to environmental inuences (Tinsley and Brodt, 2004). As Leung et al. (2005) argue, this view brought important implications to culture study in international marketing. They contend that, rst, it implied that cultural change may be more frequent than previously thought; second, it raised the possibility that cultural differences may be easier to overcome than previously assumed under appropriate situational inuences, and third, it raised the question of under what moderating variables cultures inuence might change. In this context, Gibson et al. (2006) offer a portfolio of moderating conditions that might operate at the individual, group, and situational levels that could serve to moderate the impact of national culture on individual perceptions, beliefs, and behavior. They propose that the degree to which

the individual identies with the culture, the individuals level of self esteem, the level of team cooperation in cross-cultural teams, the stage of group development, and technological uncertainty can amplify cultures inuence on individual behavior, independently or interdependently (Leung et al., 2005). Shortcomings of earlier studies and remedies As the review of the development of culture theory in international marketing presented above indicates, we have made considerable progress in our study of national, even sub-national, culture in international marketing during the last two decades or so. We have, for example, rened the governing dimensions, began delving more deeply into the possible impacts of sub-cultures, and have expanded our studies to larger numbers of national cultures. We have also recognized, however, that major shortcomings in culture study still remain, and these need to be remedied for more robust studies and crisper understanding of culture as a signicant ingredient in international marketing strategy. We now address these shortcomings and remedies (Table I). First, we need to broaden our understanding of culture and identify cultures limitations as an explanatory variable (Gluesing, 2007; Leung et al., 2005; Nakata, 2003; Hofstede, 2001). When we view culture as a dynamic, holistic system that embodies material, symbolic, social, and technical sub-systems that extract and give back energy to the environment in which social structures and people interact with one another in a coordinated way and where this system and the people who compose it inuence each other inter-culturally, the dimensionalizing frameworks may not have as much practical value as we would like. These frameworks are typically applied in static fashion, when in fact, culture should be viewed as a holistic (composed of integrated parts), and dynamic system that is in constant ux with continuous variability, yet distinctiveness, that separates it from other systems. This is especially relevant in todays global business environment where there is turbulence with invasions of ideas from other places that create much more ux and new institutions and technical systems, and outside inuences on a culture rock its systems rapidly and pervasively, creating tension between existing social institutions, ideologies, and business practices. Further, geography and history may be important inuencers on culture and its manifestations in business and marketing. For instance, the inuence of the Catholic Church in the cultures of many Latin American markets and the geographic isolation of Japan for many centuries from the rest of the world may have had a lasting impact on its current business culture. Second, we need to develop more advanced conceptualizations of culture and apply the dimensionalizing frameworks in a greater number of countries to better validate their psychometric properties. The frameworks we have been using in international marketing research may have been applied in earlier studies without proper conceptual development and in smaller numbers of countries making their results marginally valid (Hofstede, 2001). Reviewing 61 replications of Hofstedes work, for example, Sondergaard (1994) has shown that while taken together these studies do conrm the applicability of Hofstedes (2001, p. 463) dimensions in many cases, other variables may account for disconrmation of his particular dimensions in a minority of the cases, raising the possibility that his dimensions might not be universally applicable. Sondergaards work also highlights another underlying problem: at what level should culture be studied. Hofstede (2001) has argued that the reliability of a cross-country test can be established only across countries, not across individuals; confusing cultures

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Shortcomings of previous studies Culture has been dimensionalized in static fashion, often conceptualized as national culture

Suggested remedies We need to broaden our understanding of culture and identify its limitations as an explanatory variable. We need to view it as a holistic (composed of integrated parts) and dynamic system that is in continuous ux and variability yet distinctiveness that separates it from other systems. Geography and history may be important inuencers on culture and its manifestations in marketing. Subcultures do matter in motivational domains and behavior We need to develop more advanced conceptualizations of culture and apply the dimensionalizing frameworks in a greater number of countries to better validate their psychometric properties. Dimensions may not be universally applicable. Further, individual-level factors, such as socialization, personality constructs, and consequences of social interactions may be important inuencers of cultural behavior, and thus, need to be included in culture studies. There might also be a hierarchy of cultural axioms where one axiom may be dominant (individualism in the USA), and these dominant axioms might be exerting a greater inuence on the cultural behavior we observe We need to dene culture much more sharply as a construct, more carefully account for and better understand the mediating and moderating inuences on the domains of culture we study and match our samples much more precisely. Sub-cultural distinctions may modify our interpretations of culture. Different cultural frames get activated in different situations, thus it is important to delineate which of these are operational and when We need to include researchers from our focal cultures and cognate disciplines, and conduct tests of inequivalencies to assure equivalencies in research design, survey conditions, and research measures so that our research interpretations are psychometrically sound We need to develop additional dimensions, search for core axioms and axiom hierarchies to enrich our earlier conceptualizations of culture. We need to apply more rigorous techniques to better understand the independent, in addition to the collective or interdependent, inuences on culture for richer interpretations of cultural phenomena

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Culture has been conceptualized relatively simplistically and culture studies have been applied in most cases in a limited number of countries. Culture has been equated with value structures of societies

Culture studies have not, typically, taken into account the possible inuence of moderating and mediating inuences on the domains of culture we study. They have not matched their samples robustly

Culture study has, typically, been conducted in ethnocentric mindsets with research designs, instruments, and interpretations provided from the point of view of one nations research traditions (typically the USA). Equivalencies are typically not accounted for in the design of the research or the interpretation of ndings Studies have typically used a few dimensions to understand culture

Table I. Shortcomings of previous studies and suggested remedies

with individuals may have created a fallacy in earlier studies, casting doubt on the validity of their ndings. In Hofstedes (2001, p. 463) words, culture is no king size personality; cultures are formed through the interactions of different personalities, both conicting and complementary, which create a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. Thus, the tendency to equate culture to the sum of its individual cognitive, behavioral, and values components may be a limited approach to culture study. As Bond et al. (2004, p. 567) have later argued:
[. . .] while culture-level factors may help us characterize societies in how they manifest themselves in the domains of institutional process and citizen dynamics, individual-level factors represent a part of a psychological discourse with origins in genetics and socialization, personality constructs, and consequences of social interactions and life outcomes.

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Further, there might be a hierarchy of cultural axioms or a dominant axiom (say, individualism in the USA) that might exert greater inuence on a culture than other inuences. Thus, we need to study culture as a whole, and not as a summation of its component parts. Some recent studies have attempted to correct this shortcoming (House et al., 2004; Bond et al., 2004; Leung et al., 2005). Third, we need to more crisply dene culture as a construct, do everything we can to better understand the mediating and moderating inuences on its various domains, and match our samples much more precisely in future studies (Leung et al., 2005; Hofstede, 2001). When culture is viewed as underlying everything about a society as a system, understanding the possible effects of chosen moderating or mediating inuences, such as education level, gender, age, type of organization, nature of the product, and industry turbulence on culture becomes imperative in drawing conclusions about its impact on business and marketing. Better denition of culture as a construct will also help in clearing researchers confusion of national, with other levels of culture, such as the deeper sub-cultural distinctions based on generational, geographic, motivational, and social class differences (Lenartowitz and Roth, 2001). As Hofstede (2001, p. 464) argues, the inuence of these differences as moderating and/or mediating variables on measuring such dependent variables as organizational performance would be questionable if they are not properly included in models purporting to measure cultural similarities and differences. Further, since different cultural frames (i.e. occupational, organizational, regional, and national) get activated in different situations, it is important to delineate which of these are operational and when. Which forms of culture are salient in a given business situation is a key challenge in culture study and managerial practice. Fourth, we need to overcome our own ethnocentrism in culture study; that is, our tendency to apply the dimensional frameworks we use and judge the scores obtained from these with our own cultures point of view and value system (Leung et al., 2005; Hofstede, 2001). This problem includes our tendency to frame research instruments from our own understanding of cultural dimensions, form indexes from these, and assume that these indexes, in fact, represent the original dimensions (Hofstede, 2001). However, as Hofstede (2001, p. 464) indicates, without establishing the validity of these newly formed dimensions in a large number of countries, the ndings from these studies might not be reliable, valid, or generalizable. Another component of this problem is the researchers lack of attention to establishing conceptual, functional, administrative, and construct equivalency while comparing and contrasting cultural proles attached to national samples (Craig and Douglas, 2000). Inequivalencies in any, or any combination, of these, especially in construct denition and measurement, could

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render comparisons meaningless and invalid. Thus, it is important that we include researchers from our focal cultures and from cognate disciplines and that we conduct tests of inequivalencies so that we can assure acceptable degrees of psychometric rigor in our studies (Mullen, 1995; Steenkamp and Baumgartner, 1998). Finally, since culture is a many-dimensional whole, we need to include additional dimensions to its earlier conceptualizations. We need to identify newer dimensions and search for core or dominant cultural axioms and hierarchies of axioms that might provide stronger explanations of cultural phenomena. As Hoftstede (2001, p. 465) underscores, earlier work may have suffered from the mistaken notion that researchers phenomena had to be related to all of the dimensions of a framework. In fact, as Hofstede (2001, p. 465) observes, the strength of models, such as his, is that they allow conceptual parsimony; that is, the researcher can detect which of the dimensions is, in fact, responsible for the particular effect that is being observed. To observe this effect, he suggests the use of procedures, such as stepwise regression that allow delineation of spurious correlation among the dimensions, so that the independent effects of dimensions can be observed more clearly for a better interpretation of ndings. In the same vein, Leung et al. (2005) argue that broader portfolios of conceptual tools, such as beliefs and social axioms might be better barometers of the culture we are studying than value-based dimensionalizing tools. They discuss ve axioms that they feel provides an alternative to value-based dimensionalizing: human nature, social complexity, reward for application, spirituality, and fate control. Discussion, conclusions, and avenues for future research Our review of culture theory in international business and marketing shows that we have made good progress in incorporating culture study into our research, but that this progress has not been truly signicant. This limitation has been due to many factors, e.g. the nature of culture as a difcult-to-measure construct, relegation of culture effects to unexplained variance after the direct effects of other constructs have been accounted for, the lack of more robust culture theorizing by the elds scholars, and insufcient or underdeveloped methodologies we have employed in studying culture until recently ( Nakata, 2003). Fortunately, signicant developments in culture study have taken place in our eld in the last decade or so, exemplied by major studies incorporating a large number of national cultures and cross-cultural research teams (Leung et al., 2005; Bond et al., 2004), meaningful renements made to culture classication frameworks ( House et al., 2004), and research focus on the deeper nuances of national culture, such as ethnic and/or regional sub-cultures to develop more accurate maps of these cultures ( Lenartowitz and Roth, 2001). As culture will likely become a more signicant ingredient of international marketing strategy in the years ahead, we need to respond to the increased need for more powerful culture study in the years ahead. We believe the following exemplify the streams of research that can help us in this regard: . Develop methods with which to study converging and diverging inuences on culture. While globalizing (rationalizing) values might be converging among cultures, whether national or sub-national, local (traditional) values may be persistent. Better understand the reciprocal relationships embedded in cultural transformation and the intersections where culture gets negotiated. . Develop a better understanding of the dynamic nature of culture change to better explain how culture is being shaped by environmental changes. Better understand

how such constructs as the self, identity, trust and reciprocity transform under the conuence of globalization and technological change. Ask: are new cultural forms emerging; are new types of consumer behaviors, such as cosmopolitanism, economic nationalism, patriotism, and ethnocentrism emerging? Expand the portfolio of cultures, national and other, in research so that more generalizable conclusions can be drawn from research. Advance the psychometric properties of the studies ndings. Apply multi-method approaches to culture study, including experimentation, so that causality and interaction effects among cultural constructs can be better understood and more reliable conceptualizations can be developed.

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First, we need to develop methods with which to study converging and diverging inuences on culture, whether national or sub-national, in conjoint fashion (Gluesing, 2007; Leung et al., 2005). While we have evidence, for instance, that consumer values and lifestyles might be converging in the era of globalization, we also have evidence that this cultural convergence may be largely supercial, with only limited inuence on fundamental constructs such as beliefs, norms, and ideas about how individuals, institutions, and other social agencies function (Leung et al., 2005). That is, traditional values such as interpersonal harmony, paternalism, economic and social survival, and group solidarity may in fact co-exist with modern, rational values such as individual achievement, self-expression, and competition (Inglehart and Baker, 2000). Since, international marketing is both an agent and a recipient of cultural change, we must be able to understand the complex, reciprocal relationships embedded in cultural transformation for marketing to become effective in multiple markets (Leung et al., 2005). We need to focus more on where interactions among the levels of culture take place and at the intersections where culture gets negotiated (Gluesing, 2007). Second, we need to develop better ways with which to better understand the dynamic nature of culture change so that we are better able to explain how culture is being shaped and reshaped by environmental changes. In this context, we need to develop a better understanding of how such constructs as the self, identity, trust, and reciprocity will grow under the conuence of globalization and rapid technological change (Buchan, 2003) so that we might better understand consumer behavior in national cultures. Emergence of new cultural forms is one of the most fascinating and potentially more promising areas of research (Gluesing, 2007). For example, is globalization of markets and competition leading to more cosmopolitan purchase behavior? Is globalization leading to more clearly dened cultural territories as cultural/sub-cultural groups respond to globalization with ethnocentric consumption or economic nationalism? When rms develop and implement standardized marketing strategies, where are these accepted and why? Will standardized global product development systems, such as those currently implemented by General Motors and Ford Motor Company, work in multiple cultures? What cultural axioms will account for some aspects of these to be accepted globally, even regionally, and what aspects not? Third, we need to expand the portfolio of national cultures in our research so that we can arrive at more generalizable conclusions. Projects such as the GLOBE study of 62 societies (House et al., 2004) and Ingleharts WVS surveys in 65 societies (Inglehart and Baker, 2000) are illustrative of this type of research. Studies such as these are likely to enhance our understanding of culture as they take much more of

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cultures complexities into consideration. They also advance the psychometric properties of our ndings, including improving the reliability and validity of our measures. While doing this, we need to conceptualize culture much more comprehensively to include its many levels and domains and static and dynamic (interaction and intersection) elements into our work, and further study the ampliers of culture effects on perceptions, beliefs, attitudes and behavior. That is, we need to understand better when certain culture effects are antecedents, moderators, and mediators on outcomes, and how these impact individual vs group vs institutional results. As Leung et al. (2005) indicate, these improved measures will foster more comprehensive specications in our models of cultural impacts and prevent us from committing costly attribution errors. Fourth, in terms of method and methodology, we agree with Leung et al.s (2005) suggestion that we use multi-method approaches to culture research, including experimentation. They suggest that, experimentation can be a superior tool in demonstrating causality and interaction effects among variables as it allows for manipulation of variables and identication of the limits of cultures inuences much more readily. Multi-method approaches can lead us to clearer pictures of how cognitive processing, when reinforced through such constructs as education and embedded social networks, might inuence purchase behavior in multiple markets (Leung et al., 2005). They can also show us when and how we might be able to combine two or more cultures into cross-cultural teams, such as in new product development and launch, while appreciating that multicultural collaboration can be hampered by distractions, such as mistrust, stereotyping, and stress (Nakata and Sivakumar, 1996). The use of multiple methods might offer a more robust methodology given that culture studies typically involve multiple constructs each with multiple variables under study and the need to control for the effects of these under varying circumstances. Also, since there might be multiple groups in a national culture that overall may be harmonious collectively while being composed of dissimilar proles and that these proles might vary depending on the referent group, assessing culture through multiple methods could help us develop more reliable conceptualizations (Leung et al., 2005; Lenartowitz and Roth, 1999). Focusing greater attention on these improvement suggestions should help us develop more theoretically robust and managerially applicable culture theories that possess stronger ontological and epistemological roots and that permeate the many domains of international marketing research (Nakata and Huang, 2002). With greater emphasis on theorizing and with sounder methodologies, we should be able to explore culture theory in much deeper fashion. Increased attention on these issues should make our journey in better assessing, understanding, and proling cultures true inuence on international marketing questions and strategy much more theoretically and managerially rewarding.
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