SAJMS - South Asian Journal of Management Sciences

Asian diversities: A snapshot of inter-and-intra differences on collectivism and purchasing endeavorst

This study investigates the potential difference in consumption behavior among customers in five Asian settings: Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, India, and China. Of particular interest,the research investigates the relationship between the amount of social influences that occurs in purchasing endeavors and people s orientation toward collectivism. Samples of university students from the jive Asian countries are employed,thus controlling for age, occupational and social class factors. After elimination of missing data, the sample consisted of 797 respondents: 118 Thais, 194 Chinese, 181 Indians, 124 Singaporeans, and 180 Taiwanese. ANOVA and Scheffe tests are administered to test the hypotheses. The findings confirm Hofstede s study in 2001 is still applicable to observe the general view of cultural values. Moreover,the results indicate that, regardless of the countries, men are generally less susceptible to social influence than women. As for social influence, this study indicates that collectivism/individualism dimension may only be partially applied in an international setting when trying to predict the level of social influence. As for gender difference, the results show that regardless of the countries, women are more collectivist than men and therefore, more susceptible to social influence in buying behavior than their counterparts. Thus, the relationship between collectivism and social influence is still highly complex in a cross-national context, and should be subject to further research.

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