CULTURED MINDS

TYPE OF INFORMATION

 

 

The holistic/analytic thinking style tendency is also applicable to information search. Americans prefer target-focused evidence and self-descriptions in their evaluations of other people, while Chinese participants did not (Ames & Peng 2001).

 

Source of information

(Dawar & Parker, 1994) also detected variation in the use of information sources (e.g magazines, salespeople) by consumers from different cultures. More recent support comes from (Money, 2000)’s results that firms from Japan (a high uncertainty avoidance culture) use more word-of-mouth search to source their corporate travel services than do American (a lower uncertainty avoidance culture) firms. However, it is in fact Germans (who have a medium uncertainty avoidance culture) who use word of mouth the most. Japanese consumers more frequently turn to travel agents when organising travel compared to the Germans (Money & Crotts, 2003). Apparently using a travel agent brings even more certainty than a word-of-mouth search which brings more certainty than traditional information search (e.g magazines).

 

Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance & Regulatory Focus

Other studies have pointed to Power Distance (authority) & Uncertainty Avoidance (risk) as key factors which impact the focus of consumers’ information search. Lower Uncertainty Avoidance & Power Distance cultures search for product information from impersonal/objective sources more often e.g ‘Consumer Reports’ magazine. They also tend to seek information which presented in a manner congruent to their regulatory focus (Lee, Aaker & Gardner, 2000)

 

Consensus

People from collectivists versus individualist cultures place different emphasis on the importance of in-groups and social norms, so it makes sense that consensus information (information from the group) is valued differently (Aaker & Maheswaren, 1997). In her US-based study (McArthur, 1972) discovered that people ‘strikingly underutilise’ consensus information to make judgements, but when replicated in Korea participants used consensus information more frequently (Nam, 1985) cited in (Choi, Nisbett & Norenzayan, 1998).