Cultural Value, Consumption Value, and Global Brand Image: A Cross-National Study

In expanding their market to the global level with clear and consistent global brand images across nations, marketers are ever confronting the issue of how to deal with different cultural values. Cultural value is identified as an influential factor on brand image and is widely accepted as one of the crucial concepts in understanding consumer consumption value, which determines choices of consuming everyday products and services. Most firms endeavoring to establish and maintain consistent global brand images, however, adopt a standardized brand image strategy that usually does not consider individual target markets' characteristics, including the concepts of cultural value and consumption value. This study developed a conceptual framework which incorporated cultural value not only as a direct antecedent of brand image, but also as an indirect antecedent of brand image through consumption value, and empirically tested it using the category of apparel. Following this framework, this study hypothesized the differences in brand image, cultural value, and consumption value between the U.S. and South Korea. Data were gathered through surveying university students residing in the San Francisco and Seoul metropolitan areas using a convenience sampling method. A total of 329 completed questionnaires were used in factor analysis, discriminant analysis, and structural equation modeling. The results provide insights into standardized brand image strategies and suggest some implementable tools that might prove effective in both countries. (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.