Question

Define

a cross-national approach

a cross-cultural approach

Global culture positioning

Foreign culture positioning

Local culture positioning

•Choose a product/service that could be marketed globally.

•Build an arugment for applying either a cross-national or cross-cultural approach to segment the global market for the product.

•Now, build an argument for positioning the product/brand as a symbol of global, foreign or local culture.

•

Answer 1

Cross National Approach : Of, relating to, or involving two or more nations

Cross Cultural Approach : Cross-cultural approach is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes, including both their variability and invariance, under diverse cultural conditions. Through expanding research methodologies to recognize cultural variance in behavior, language, and meaning it seeks to extend and develop psychology.

Global Cultural Positioning :  is defined as a strategy in which a brand is associated with global consumer culture. Global consumer culture (GCC) is defined as a shared set of consumption-related symbols 48 and behaviours (e.g. product categories, brands, consumption activities) that are commonly understood but not necessarily shared by consumers and businesses around the world.

Foreign Culture Positioning : FCP is defined as a strategy that positions the brand as symbolic of a specific foreign consumer culture; that is, a brand whose personality, use occasion, and/or user group are associated with a foreign culture.

Local Culture Positioning : > LCCP is a strategy in which a brand is associated with local meanings, reflects the local culture's norms and identities, is portrayed as consumed by local people in the national culture, and/or is depicted as locally produced for local people.

Leung and colleagues (2005) define national culture as the values, beliefs, norms, and behavioral patterns of a national group. Until recently, most international business research has focused on cross-national research in which national culture, based on group membership in a nation-state, is used as a grouping variable to study cultural variation among countries (Adams and Markus 2004). In this national culture–centric approach, the emphasis is essentialist in nature, with fixed notions of national culture—namely, that national cultures are stable—thus discounting the idea that cultural identities within the nation-state are continuously constructed. In line with Hofstede’s (2001) argument that culture changes very slowly, national culture has been treated as a relatively stable construct (i.e., static entity) that reflects a shared knowledge structure within a nationstate and that attenuates variability in values, behavioral norms, and patterns of behaviors (Erez and Earley 1993). One major argument in favor of cultural stability is that traditional values, such as group solidarity, interpersonal harmony, paternalism, and familism, can coexist with modern values of individual achievement and competition (Smith and Bond 1998). For example, Chang, Wong, and Koh (2003) find that the Chinese in Singapore endorsed traditional values of moderation and social power denoting deference to authority and facesaving along with modern values such as prudence, industry, civic harmony, and moral development. Moreover, Hofstede (2001) asserts that the mental programs of people around the world do not change rapidly; therefore, national culture, particularly individualism– collectivism, endures over time and is consistent within countries. Even when countries are culturally diverse, members share the same cultural foundation; thus, according to cross-national research, nationality can be considered a viable proxy for culture (Beaudreau 2006; Dawar and Parker 1994). Although cultural stability reflects broadly shared national-cultural values, its assumptions are challenged when environmental changes and situational contingencies precipitate adaptation and cultural change. During these contingencies, national culture fails to adequately account for either intracultural or global-level variables that influence national culture (Adams and Markus 2004). In contrast to the cross-national perspective, cross-cultural research views culture as a distinct web of significance or meaning that involves sense making, meaning making, or production that goes beyond the constraints of group membership (Adams and Markus 2004). The theoretical notion of culture as a dynamic rather than static construct (as in cross-national research) is borrowed primarily from the work of Erez and Gati (2004), Gould and Grein (2009), and Kitayama (2002). Kitayama views culture and individual psychological processing as evolving adaptations to ecological and sociopolitical influences and proposes a system view of culture in which each person’s cognitive structures (i.e., frames, schemas, and scripts) are dynamically organized and their behavior coordinated with the pertinent cultural systems of practices and meanings. In their comprehensive model, Erez and Gati (2004) propose culture as a multilevel, multilayered construct in which global culture shapes national culture (i.e., macro level), which in turn shapes nested cultural units at the organizational and group levels (i.e., meso level), which then permeates to the individual level (i.e., micro level). As cultural values are transmitted from national culture to the individual, a set of core common values at each level are retained while unique values reflecting heterogeneity are introduced (Leung et al. 2005). In addition to top-down processes, bottom-up processes take place, emerging at the inddividual level and then permeating the group and organizational levels, and when the new cultural norms are further shared by most organizations in a geographical region, it becomes a national-level culture. Gould and Grein (2009) construe culture as a pivotal and holistic construct, distinct from national culture, and position culture-centric research as a constructivist process of meanings and patterns of practices that are rooted in the processes of culture itself. Unlike national culture, the formation and evolution of culture involves a social construction of practices and experiences that puts emphasis on meaning, context, and process. Furthermore, a culture-centric view proposes a network of communities at the local level where culture is produced (based on, e.g., lifestyles and personal characteristics), defined by the salience of each community rather than by hierarchy, as Erez and Gati (2004) and Leung and colleagues (2005) espouse. Global Market Segmentation 21 Culture is embodied in the transfer and construction of meaning and involves processes such as identity formation, hybridization, and glocalization (Gould and Grein 2009). For example, global culture—embodied as global flows of ideas, people, images, capital, technology, and brands—constitutes the glocalization process through the global–local dialectic (Kjeldgaard and Askegaard 2006), which can lead to changes at both the national and the individual level (i.e., self-identity and social identity). A new global identity is formed that enables people to develop a sense of belongingness to a global culture, often manifested by adopting global values, beliefs, lifestyles, and consumption practices (Arnett 2002). This type of “elective identity” that consumers are able to self-fashion from the world around them fills a void left by national culture (Cornwell and Drennan 2004). However, this is not to say that national culture would disappear but rather that people would likely construct their own elective identities (Arnett 2002; Leung et al. 2005). CROSS-NATIONAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL HYPOTHESES: DIMENSIONS OF PSQ In cross-national analysis, prior research has departed from Hofstede’s (1991) original conceptualization in two ways. First, most researchers have exclusively focused on individualism–collectivism; they have not considered the other four cultural dimensions Hofstede identifies: power distance, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation (Oyserman, Coon, and Kemmelmeier 2002; Triandis 1995). Second, Hofstede’s individualism–collectivism scales were originally designed for country-level analysis, and yet crossnational researchers have used them at the individual level of analysis. Therefore, conflicting findings in prior research can be attributed to the disparity between the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of Hofstede’s conceptualization inherent in the two levels of analysis (Kirkman, Lowe, and Gibson 2006; Oyserman, Coon, and Kemmelmeier 2002). To overcome this limitation, we draw on Markus and Kitayama’s (1991, 1994) theoretical work, which explains cultural dimensions of individualism– collectivism at the country level by considering independent versus interdependent self-construal at the individual level. Similar to individualism–collectivism at the national level, independent self-construal is constructed with primary reference to one’s own internal repertoire of thoughts, feelings, and actions; the self in interdependent self-construal is viewed as interdependent with the surrounding context, and it is the “other” or the “selfin-relation-to-other” that is focal in individual experience (Markus and Kitayama 1991). Cross-national research is based on the assumption that people from individualist national cultures are more likely to possess independent self-construal at the individual level, while those from collectivist countries are more  likely to have more interdependent self-construal (Gudykunst et al. 1996; Oyserman, Coon, and Kemmelmeier 2002). In contrast, our approach is based on the belief that there is considerable within-country variation on cultural values (Au 1999; Kirkman, Lowe, and Gibson 2006; Tung 2008) because the ever-growing hegemony of the global culture influences the “elective identity” of consumers within nation-states to yield significant heterogeneity (Arnett 2002; Cornwell and Drennan 2004). Studies have shown that people in one country can be more individualist and collectivist, on average, than people from another country and that cultural values can vary within, as well as among, countries (Bochner and Hesketh 1994; Oyserman, Coon, and Kemmelmeier 2002). In comparing several countries, Au (1999) finds that intracultural variation on certain variables is greater than intercultural variation. These variables include demographics, rigidity of rules and social structures, cultural tightness and looseness, moral discipline, and government policies that reinforce the dominant behavior (Au 1999; Hofstede 1991). Moreover, significant cultural differences have been shown between regions or subcultures within a single nation-state (Kirkman, Lowe, and Gibson 2006). Therefore, by identifying global segments that transcend national boundaries and share more commonalities than differences, we expect cross-cultural research to yield greater homogeneity in global segmentation than crossnational research. Because we recognize the difficulty of identifying (a priori) culture-based segments on the basis of theory, the empirical portion of this article identifies culture-based global segments using a clustering technique. We posit that culture-based global segments in cross-cultural analysis will result in greater homogeneity in consumers’ PSQ, and consequently we predict nonsignificant differences in the importance assigned to the dimensions and consequences of PSQ. That is, we predict that crosscultural analysis will reveal greater similarity than crossnational analysis in the importance (i.e., similarity in the magnitude of factor loadings) of PSQ dimensions and its consequences. In the remainder of this section, we frame our hypotheses in terms of the five dimensions of PSQ that Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1988) conceptualize and measure: tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Tangibility Tangibility refers to the physical evidence of the service, consisting of physical facilities and technology, appearance of personnel, tools or equipment, and physical presentation of the service, which can influence consumers on physiological, sociological, cognitive, and emotional levels (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry 1985). Research in self-construal and self-regulatory focus suggests that people with independent selfconstrual seek promotion goals that deliver achievement and efficiency and that minimize the discrepancy between their current and desired end states (Higgins 1998; Markus and Kitayama 1991). Such promotion-focused people view tangibility as a culmination of their achievement and desired end state as well as a means to enhance autonomy, enabling them to enter and leave social relations freely (Kwan, Bond, and Singelis 1997). Therefore, in the services sector, to manage consumers with higher promotion goals and lower tolerance for error (i.e., higher efficiency), individualists need to follow a relentless pursuit of continuous improvement in tangibility. In contrast, people with interdependent self-construal tend to focus on prevention goals because they are more concerned with stability and security and therefore are less open to change. That is, a preference for status quo tends to be stronger among collectivists as they seek to minimize potential losses that are important to them (Chernev 2004; Higgins 1998). One such potential loss is the deterioration of relationship harmony in a social network (Kwan, Bond, and Singelis 1997), which will likely occur because focus is centered on tangible accomplishments and lower tolerance for error. Therefore, consumers in collectivist countries are less concerned with tangibility, especially if it jeopardizes relationship harmony and people’s dependence on networks of generalized social reciprocity. Therefore, we predict the following: H1: Consumer perceptions of tangibles of the service organization (a) will be significantly different in importance in cross-national analysis of dimensions of PSQ (i.e., greater importance in individualist national culture than in collectivist national culture) but (b) will not be significantly different in crosscultural analysis. Reliability Service reliability means performing the service dependably, consistently, and accurately. Members of collectivist countries tend to construct interdependent selfconstrual in which important relationships, group memberships, and social roles define the self (Markus and Kitayama 1994). An interdependent self-construal cannot be characterized as a bounded whole, because it changes structure with the nature of the particular social context (Markus and Kitayama 1991). We expect human inconsistency across situations in collectivist societies because the norms and rules associated with situations vary and the ability to adapt one’s behavior across situations smoothly is often considered a sign of a person’s maturity (Cross, Gore, and Morris 2003). Because each self-defining relationship calls for unique sets of behaviors and expectations, the ability to detect and align the self spontaneously to the subtle expectations of different social situations is considered a critical social skill (Suh 2002). In contrast, members of individualist countries tend to construct an independent self-construal based on the real self. Consistent expression of traits, abilities, attitudes, and other personality characteristics helps validate the real self. For example, people with independent self-construal view themselves consistently across situations and display beliefs and value judgments that are consistent with past personal commitments (Petrova, Cialdini, and Sills 2007; Suh 2002). Therefore, individual consistency is reflective of maturity and self-integrity in individualist societies, and a lack of consistency poses a threat to the core authentic self (Cross, Gore, and Morris 2003). Consumers in individualist countries, because of the need to maintain and enhance a consistent “real” self, demand consistent and reliable service from employees. For this reason, we argue that the reliability of human service delivery is more salient in defining PSQ in individualist countries than in collectivist countries. Specifically, we predict the following: H2: Consumer perceptions of reliability of the service employee (a) will be significantly different in importance in cross-national analysis of dimensions of PSQ (i.e., greater importance in individualist national culture than in collectivist national culture) but (b) will not be significantly different in cross-cultural analysis. Responsiveness Responsiveness is demonstrated by employees’ willingness to provide prompt service and to help consumerssubstantively. Providing prompt and timely service is an important dimension of each service encounter (Taylor 1994). People with independent self-construal are promotion focused and strive for goal attainment and efficiency (Higgins 1998). They value autonomy and a strong work ethic and believe that “time is money” (i.e., a scarce resource); therefore, “saving time” means reallocating time across activities to achieve greater efficiency (Berry, Seiders, and Grewal 2002; Markus and Kitayama 1991). Furthermore, people with independent self-construal tend to use communication styles that focus on task constraints (i.e., conveying the message with maximum clarity and directness). Communication is geared toward achieving personal goals and is dominated by the instrumental function of maximizing the substantive outcome for the individual person (Kim, Sharkey, and Singelis 1994). Consequently, service employees in individualist countries should be willing and able to deliver timely and substantive responses to consumers’ inquiries and complaints. In contrast, people with interdependent self-construal are stability focused, emotional, and focused on the past. In such cultures, time orientation is polychronic: Multiple tasks are emphasized, and time is viewed as synchronous. Furthermore, people with interdependent self-construal tend to use communication styles that focus on social relation constraints (i.e., conveying the message in a way that avoids damage or imposition to the relationship or the hearer’s loss of face; Kim, Sharkey, and Singelis 1994). They often use indirect, ambiguous, and nonverbal aspects of communication and engage in conversational silence, which is often positively perceived in collectivist cultures (Kapoor et al. 2003; Markus and Kitayama 1994). The goal is to strive toward completing a job without detailed scheduling and communication while maintaining harmony and interpersonal sensitivity. This leads to the following hypothesis: H3: Consumer perceptions of responsiveness of service employee (a) will be significantly different in importance in cross-national analysis of dimensions of PSQ (i.e., greater importance in individualist national culture than in collectivist national culture) but (b) will not be significantly different in cross-cultural analysis. Assurance Assurance refers to the knowledge and courtesy of employees and their abilities to inspire trust and confidence. The competence of the service firm may be reflected by the organization as a whole or by the frontline employees. In individualist countries, people base their perceptions of competence and trust on a person’s reliability and courtesy with respect to rights, beliefs, attitudes, and privacy (Hofstede 1991). In general, members of individualist countries strive to know and validate their unique real self. They derive confidence by behaving autonomously and resisting the influence of others (Markus and Kitayama 1991). Thus, the development of an independent self-construal seeks competence and confidence in an individual rather than the group, consistent with the individualist orientation. Consequently, consumers in individualist countries are more likely to demand that service employees be efficient and task oriented because self-confidence plays a crucial role (Furrer, Liu, and Sudharshan 2000). Members of collectivist countries view an individual as embedded in a social network, defined by their social roles and social positions (Markus and Kitayama 1994). The development of an interdependent self-construal through group membership helps define the self. Individual beliefs, attitudes, and abilities that are less important in selfdefinition are often subordinated to the “greater self” of commitment to family and in-groups (Wu 1994), implying greater confidence in the organization for the development of interdependent self-construal. Consequently, consumers in collectivist countries focus more on the competence, reputation, and skills of the organization rather than individual employees in assessing PSQ. Conversely, consumers’ perceptions of assurance from service employees, rather than organizations, are more salient in defining PSQ in individualist countries than collectivist countries. Thus, we predict the following: H4: Consumer perceptions of assurance from service employee (a) will be significantly different in importance in cross-national analysis of dimensions of PSQ (i.e., greater importance in individualist national culture than in collectivist national culture) but (b) will not be siggnificantly different in cross-cultural analysis. Empathy Empathy refers to the caring and individualized attention a firm provides to its consumers. In the case of independent self-construal, self-knowledge is more distinctive and densely elaborated in memory than knowledge about other people (Markus and Kitayama 1991). This asymmetry diminishes the ready accessibility of knowledge of others, especially in a decontextualized setting, and consequently fosters a lack of sensitivity and empathy. In contrast, knowledge about others is rela- 24 Journal of International Marketing tively more elaborated and distinctive than knowledge about the self for people with interdependent selfconstrual. As such, collectivists have more interpersonal knowledge and are more sensitive and empathetic toward others who are coparticipants in the relationship. However, Cross, Gore, and Morris (2003) examine self-construal in Western societies and offer an alternative explanation for the construction of relational self-construal: That is, it is an intermediate between independent self-construal and interdependent selfconstrual. In this self-construal, close relationships at the dyadic level are included in the self-space of individualists, and when representations of the self are activated, the representations of close others are also activated. They closely attend to (i.e., empathize with) emotional and informational self-disclosures of their relationship partners, resulting in relatively accurate and intimate knowledge of their beliefs, attitudes, and values (Cross and Morris 2003; Gore, Cross, and Morris 2006). Notwithstanding its merits, we argue that because knowledge about others is more elaborate and context dependent in collectivist than in individualist cultures, people characterized by interdependent self-construal are likely to view others with greater empathy than individualists. Therefore, we predict the following: H5: Consumer perceptions of empathy from a service employee (a) will be significantly different in importance in cross-national analysis of dimensions of PSQ (i.e., greater importance in collectivist national culture than in individualist national culture) but (b) will not be significantly different in cross-cultural analysis. CROSS-NATIONAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL HYPOTHESES: CONSEQUENCES OF PSQ Effect of PSQ on Attitude The literature on self-construal (Markus and Kitayama 1991) indicates that the memory of people with independent self-construal contains autonomous semantic contents of attitudes, traits, and abilities, whereas the interdependent self-construal memory contains social semantic contents that describe a person’s affiliation to other people, including social contexts (Fiske et al. 1998; Hannover and Kuhnen 2004). People with independent self-construal aggregate information and integrate it into abstract categories using a contextindependent mode of processing. Therefore, individualists who have higher levels of cognitive complexity tend to cluster information at the abstract level and use less concrete and episodic descriptions (Klein and Loftus 1988), whereas those with interdependent self-construal aggregate information using a context-dependent mode of processing. In other words, collectivists perceive in a more field-dependent manner and are more likely to memorize contextual information containing episodic information (Hannover and Kuhnen 2004); that is, theytend to construct differentiated category structures with multiple subcategories, thus necessitating categorizing and processing at the dimensional level (Jain, Desai, and Mao 2007). Consequently, because PSQ is a higherorder construct, we predict that the magnitude of the effect on attitude will be greater in an individualist than in a collectivist national culture. That is: H6: The magnitude of the effect of PSQ on attitude (a) will be significantly different in importance in cross-national analysis (i.e., larger in individualist national culture than in collectivist national culture) but (b) will not be significantly different in cross-cultural analysis. Effect of PSQ on Satisfaction Overall satisfaction is a global affective construct based on feelings and emotions of the total purchase and consumption experience with a good or service over time. Prior research has indicated that the appraisal of cognitively oriented PSQ precedes affective-oriented satisfaction (Cronin and Taylor 1992). In individualist countries, the open expression of emotions is a significant source of well-being and life satisfaction, and through this process, it serves to validate the authentic self and self-serving motives of goal attainment (Markus and Kitayama 1991). Thus, we believe that poor PSQ will lead people to express their true feelings of dissatisfaction without reservation, allowing them to enter and leave relationships freely. Satisfaction and dissatisfaction can be expressed candidly without diminishing their importance and their likely influence on the longterm relationship. In collectivist countries, relationships are built on trust and commitment within a system that values group harmony and cooperation. Life satisfaction is derived from successfully carrying out social roles and obligations and avoiding failures. Expression of emotions is significantly shaped by a consideration of the reaction of others, and self-serving motives are replaced by otherserving motives (Markus and Kitayama 1991; Oyserman, Coon, and Kemmelmeier 2002). Thus, true Global Market Segmentation 25 feelings of dissatisfaction are often suppressed for the good of the group and the preservation of the long-term relationship. Consequently, when trust and commitment are strong as in collectivist countries, PSQ is less likely to lead to an expression of dissatisfaction or satisfaction. Therefore, we predict the following: H7: The magnitude of the effect of PSQ on satisfaction (a) will be significantly different in importance in cross-national analysis (i.e., larger in individualist national culture than in collectivist national culture) but (b) will not be significantly different in cross-cultural analysis. Effects of Attitude and Satisfaction The effect of satisfaction on behavioral intentions has been well established (Zeithaml, Berry, and Parasuraman 1996). Satisfaction is an important mediating construct between attitude and intention for low relational consumers (Garbarino and Johnson 1999). Finally, there is a long research tradition of the attitude–behavior linkage being mediated by behavioral intention (Cronin, Brady, and Hult 2000; Netemeyer and Bearden 1992). However, scholars have questioned the cross-cultural validity of some Western models (e.g., theory of reasoned action) on the grounds that cultural influences are directly transmitted through norms (Lee and Green 1991). Notwithstanding, it has been argued that the general behavioral intention models are etic in nature (i.e., standardized) (Malhotra and McCort 2001), and therefore we believe that the influence of attitude on satisfaction and attitude on patronage will be similar in this study for two reasons. First, we use global summary measures of attitude and satisfaction instead of multidimensional measures to test for nomological validity. Second, because we do not use the normative component that might transmit cultural influences (Lee and Green 1991), we expect the models to be similar in both samples. Thus, we predict the following: H8: The magnitude of the effect of attitude on satisfaction (a) will not be significantly different in importance in cross-national analysis (i.e., no significant difference in individualist national culture compared with collectivist national culture) and (b) will not be significantly different in cross-cultural analysis. H9: The magnitude of the effect of attitude on patronage intention (a) will not be significantly different in importance in crossnational analysis (i.e., no significant difference in individualist national culture compared with collectivist national culture) and (b) will not be significantly different in cross-cultural analysis. However, given that individualists are likely to express their satisfaction and dissatisfaction candidly and more likely to leave the relationship in the event of dissatisfaction (Markus and Kitayama 1991; Oyserman, Coon, and Kemmelmeier 2002), we expect satisfaction to have a stronger influence on future patronage in people with independent self-construal than in those with interdependent self-construal. Therefore, we believe that the influence of satisfaction on patronage intention will be significantly greater in an individualist than in a collectivist national culture: H10: The magnitude of the effect of satisfaction on patronage intention (a) will be significantly different in importance in cross-national analysis (i.e., larger in individualist national culture than in collectivist national culture) but (b) will not be significantly different in cross-cultural analysis. STUDY CONTEXT AND SURVEY MEASURES For our cross-national research, we selected the United States and India to empirically investigate our hypotheses because of their difference on the individualism– collectivism dimension. The United States is representative of an individualist country in which, on average, people hold an independent self-construal. In contrast, India is representative of a collectivist country in which, on average, people hold an interdependent self-construal (Oyserman, Coon, and Kemmelmeier 2002). Both countries widely vary in terms of the other four cultural dimensions, reflecting heterogeneity across nations, and we control for this variation in our analyses. Data Collection We chose banking services for our study context because they are widely available in both countries, and the banking sector is an important part of the service economy in each nation. The investigation in each country focused primarily on domestic banks only: In the India sample, 100% of banks were domestic (i.e., Indian) with national or regional scope, and in the United States sample, approximately 75% of banks were domestic banks (i.e., American) with national or regional scope, and 25% had international scope. A structured questionnaire was prepared and administered in English in the United States and India (the largest English-speaking country in the world). We pretested the questionnaire in each country using personal interviews to identify and eliminate potential problems in question content, wording, difficulty, and instructions. The data were obtained from major metropolitan areas, and respondents in both countries were fluent in English. By using a single language, we avoided the problems associated with questionnaire translation and conceptual equivalence issues. The dominant method of survey administration in India is personal in-home interviews. Thus, for the sake of consistency, personal in-home interviews were conducted in both the United States and India. The data were collected by student interviewers, each of whom conducted eight interviews as part of the requirement for a marketing research course. Employing a large number of student interviewers enabled us to conduct the many in-home interviews in a reasonable amount of time. A total of 769 interviews were completed: 455 in the United States and 314 in India.1 Scales and Measurement We used the 21-item SERVQUAL nine-point scale (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry 1988, 1994), which taps performance perception measures along the five dimensions of PSQ following recent research (Dabholkar, Shepherd, and Thorpe 2000). To measure global attitude (Zanna and Rempel 1988), we used 4 items on a sevenpoint scale: favorable–unfavorable, good–bad, positive–negative, and pleasant–unpleasant. All attitude items were reverse coded for analysis. To measure overall satisfaction, we used both evaluative and emotion-based measures derived and adapted from Oliver (1997). We used the following 4 items using a nine-point scale: “I believe I am satisfied with my bank’s services” (“strongly disagree/strongly agree”); “Overall, I am pleased with my bank’s services” (“strongly disagree/strongly agree”); “Using services from my bank is usually an enjoyable experience” (“strongly disagree/ strongly agree”); and “My feelings toward my bank’s services can best be characterized as …” (“very dissatisfied/ very satisfied”). Adapting from Zeithaml, Berry, and Parasuraman (1996) and Dabholkar, Thorpe, and Rentz (1996), we used 3 items to measure patronage intention using a nine-point scale: “The next time my friend needs the services of a bank, I will recommend my bank” (“strongly disagree/strongly agree”); “I have no regrets of having patronized my bank in the past” (“strongly disagree/strongly agree”); and “I will continue to patronize the services of my bank in the future” (“strongly disagree/strongly agree”). Finally, we used the 20-item scale to measure (for each respondent) Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions (individualism–collectivism, power distance, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation; 4 items representing each cultural dimension) using a seven-point scale (adapted from Hofstede [1991] and Furrer, Liu, and Sudharshan [2000]). Because common method variance (CMV)—that is, the amount of spurious covariance shared among variables because of the common method used in collecting data—might bias the investigation, we tested for it using two approaches: Harman’s single factor test and marker-variable technique (Lindell and Whitney 2001; Malhotra, Kim, and Patil 2006). We computed CMVadjusted correlations, and such effects were found not to be problematic.2 Therefore, we worked with the observed correlations to test for their psychometric properties. First, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis that demonstrated support for the measurement model in both the United States and India (separately). Second, we tested for convergent and discriminant validity; the scale items used in this study were both reliable and valid for model testing. Last, our analyses established that the measurement models were equivalent across the two populations. We established measurement equivalence twice: for the “PSQ-only” model and for a “full” model, in which PSQ was embedded in a nomological net. Table 1 and the Appendix provide details of the analyses. ANALYSIS AND RESULTS This study estimates a second-order reflective model of PSQ that uses five first-order dimensions: tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy(Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry 1988). Marketing scholars agree that PSQ is a higher-order, multidimensional, and multilevel construct, though empirical validation has been rather limited and higher-order conceptualizations of PSQ have not always used the five dimensions of PSQ (see Brady and Cronin 2001; Dabholkar, Thorpe, and Rentz 1996).