This integrative volume identifies and defines cross-cultural issues in consumer psychology and consumer science as the world becomes an increasingly global marketplace. An international panel of experts analyzes current trends in consumer behavior across diverse countries worldwide and across cultural groups within countries, depicting commonly-used cross-cultural frameworks and research methods. Beginning with conceptualizing and quantifying culture at the national level, the volume then moves to individual levels of analysis of consumer decision-making, examining consumer data as they affect business decisions in marketing products internationally. The resulting work synthesizes the consumer science, international business, and consumer psychology literatures for a deeper understanding of all three disciplines and pathways to future research as cultures interact and tastes evolve. Among the topics covered: Culture as a driver of individual and national consumer behavior. Consumer culture-based attitudes toward buying foreign versus domestic products. Country-of-origin effects: consumer perceptions of international products. The roles of cultural influences in product branding. Cultural aspects of consumer-brand relationships. Consumer behavior in the emerging marketplace of subsistence countries. This attention to both national detail and individual nuance makes Cross-Cultural Issues in Consumer Science and Consumer Psychology an instructive and highly useful reference for scholars and students in consumer psychology, cross-cultural psychology, marketing, international business, as well as professionals in these areas.

The Cultural Meaning of Brands introduces a conceptual framework to understand: (1) How globalization is changing the marketplace and the way consumers bring cultural meanings and identities to the fore of their minds, (2) the mechanisms by which brands acquire cultural meanings (that is, from simple country-(or region-)-of-origin associations to the more complex enactment of cultural authority), (3) the tools that marketers have to purposefully imbue brands with cultural meanings that can resonate with culturally-diverse consumers (that is, the tools to create cultural equity), and (4) how consumers respond to the cultural meanings in brands for fulfilling their goals. This framework is based on the premise that consumers are both aware of their membership in certain cultural groups, and often motivated to affiliate with these groups to fulfill their cultural identity goals. To do so, they often attend to the cultural meanings in brands and use culturally symbolic brands as instruments to make a cultural connection. This cultural connection can emerge for identities construed at a nation-state level, a regional level within a country, a pan-regional level that includes several countries, or even for sub-groups of individuals that might reside or not within a circumscribed geographical boundary. Marketers that understand how to imbue brands with cultural meanings that resonate with consumers' cultural identity goals can build stronger consumer-brand relationships, as well as successfully differentiate from competitors in a crowded and culturally- diverse marketplace. The monograph concludes with a discussion of the future research that is needed to fully harness the power of cultural equity in globalized markets.