Ashok K. Lalwani

Indiana University Bloomington | IUB · Department of Marketing

A common problem faced by contemporary retailers is consumers’ tendency to avoid purchases which postpones or prevents cash flow for retailers, negatively affecting their sales and profits. Little is known about the factors that drive consumers to avoid purchases or about marketing tactics that may reduce the tendency, especially from a cultural pe...

Consumer surveys are integral to marketers' understanding of consumers' judgments, preferences, and choices. However, consumers often respond in socially desirable ways, making it difficult to accurately ascertain their true preferences and reactions. In this regard, research has produced conflicting findings on who engages more in socially desirab...

A logo reflects a brand's face and is an indicator of the brand’s personality and identity. Therefore, its importance has been long established among marketers. This article develops marketers' understanding on how logo size preference can be affected by consumers' psychological power and self-construal. Through six studies, we show that larger bra...

Five lab studies and a field study explore how power distance belief (PDB) influences consumers' preference for mass-market versus niche brands, the underlying mechanisms, and boundary conditions. We find that high (vs. low) PDB consumers are more likely to prefer mass-market over niche brands because they tend to be risk averse, which in turn incr...

Our research examines the likelihood of choosing a well-known brand or product (e.g., global brands, national chain stores) relative to a new one (e.g., niche brands, local stores). Six studies examine the asymmetric consequences of engaging in an analytic or holistic thinking style that mismatches the dominant thinking style associated with one's...

Goal pursuit comprises several functional components. Two important components identified by recent research are assessment (critical evaluation and comparison of entities and states) and locomotion (movement from state to state), alternately termed regulatory modes. We used both experiments and surveys across five studies, which examined the relat...

The role of culture in consumers’ price search and behavior has received limited attention in the literature. In the present research, the authors examine how the cultural dimension of power distance belief (PDB)—the extent to which people accept and endorse hierarchy—influences consumers’ price sensitivity. The authors propose that consumers high...

Consumers routinely encounter situations in which they perceive that resources are scarce. However, little is known about how this perception influences consumers’ use of price in their purchase decisions. The present research seeks to fill this gap by examining the link between scarcity and the tendency to use price to judge product quality, and t...

Four studies examined the perceived persuasiveness of pro-and anti-health messages among Koreans and Americans. Results indicated that the perceived effectiveness of messages in the two countries depends on whether a healthy (e.g., anti-smoking) or an unhealthy (pro-smoking) behavior is advocated. In general, Americans believed that they were more...

Globalization has substantially influenced the world economy. However, managers have a limited understanding of how local-global identity influences consumers’ price perceptions and behavior. In this research, we propose that consumers’ local (vs. global) identity leads to a greater tendency to make price-perceived quality (PPQ) associations. Perce...

Four studies suggested that social exclusion (vs. inclusion) by ingroups leads interdependents to discard impression management goals because of a lower tendency to identify with ingroups. In contrast, independents do not change their impression management goals when socially excluded (vs. included) by ingroups. Consequently, when included (but not...

Although coupons are very effective in increasing sales, a major challenge marketers face with coupons is the low redemption rates. Consequently, marketers are continuously trying to identify consumers who are more or less likely to respond to couponing efforts, in order to better direct coupons to segments high in coupon proneness and hence increa...

In today's fiercely competitive environment, firms are increasingly relying on loyalty programs to influence customers’ repeat purchase behavior. However, little is known about how customers’ cultural values shape their satisfaction in response to loyalty programs. Such knowledge is important because it allows marketers to identify cultural segment...

Three studies examined the relation between power distance belief (PDB), the tendency to accept and expect inequalities in society; power, the control one has over valued resources; and charitable giving. Results suggested that the effect of PDB depends on the power held by the donor. In low-PDB contexts, people high (vs. low) in psychological powe...

The role of cultural factors in influencing price perceptions is not understood well in the literature. The present research seeks to fill this gap by examining the link between power distance belief—the acceptance and endorsement of power disparities in society—and the tendency to use the price of a product to judge its quality, the underlying pro...

How does cultural self-construal influence consumers’ tendency to use price to judge quality? Seven experiments designed to address this question revealed that people with a more interdependent (vs. independent) cultural self-construal—operationalized by ethnicity, nationality, measured self-construal, or manipulated salient self-construal—have a g...

Power distance belief-the tendency to accept and expect inequalities in society- is a central construct in cross-cultural research (Hofstede 2001). Although limited research has examined the effects of PDB on consumer behavior, there is growing recognition that PDB is an important construct with significant implications on varied facets of consumer...

In 12 studies, respondents with an independent (vs. interdependent) self-construal showed an increased tendency and readiness to present themselves as skillful and capable and a decreased tendency and readiness to present themselves as socially sensitive and appropriate. This emerged in the form of differential scores on direct measures of self-pre...

Research suggests that cognitive busyness and need for closure have similar effects on a host of consumer phenomena, leading some researchers to treat the two variables as substitutes. We propose that cognitive busyness and need for closure have distinct roots and can have different effects. We examine their distinction in the context of cultural d...

Three studies investigated the relations between cultural values and socially desirable responding, the processes that underlie them, and factors that influence the strength of the relations. Results indicated that individualism was associated with self-deceptive enhancement but not impression management, whereas collectivism was associated with im...

Given increasing advertisement clutter, advertisers are increasingly trying unconventional means to attract consumers' attention. One such method involves the use of incongruent ads, which are believed to attract viewers' attention. This research was conducted to ascertain the impact of audiovisual congruency in ads and the moderating role of produ...

The commentaries by Aaker (2006), Meyers-Levy (2006), and Oyserman (2006) extend the implications of the horizontal/vertical distinction described in our article (Shavitt, Lalwani, Zhang, & Torelli, 2006) in a number of interesting directions. We join these authors in calling for further research on horizontal and vertical individualism and collect...

We argue for the importance of a relatively new cultural distinction in the horizontal (valuing equality) or vertical (emphasizing hierarchy) nature of cultures and cultural orientations. A review of the existing cross-cultural literature is presented suggesting that, although the contribution of the horizontal/vertical distinction is sometimes obs...

Research suggests that collectivists are more likely to engage in deception and socially desirable responding to maintain good relationships with others. In contrast, individualists are portrayed as candid and sincere because individualism encourages people to "be yourself." The authors propose that people with both types of cultural orientations o...

Previous research has shown that when there are multiple possible prices for two brands, the brand that is discounted frequently but at shallow levels is perceived to have a lower average price than the brand that is discounted infrequently but at deeper levels (the "frequency effect"). However, when there are only two possible prices for each bran...

With the growing use of different types of English accents in international advertising, it is important for marketers to understand the factors that influence the credibility of the spokesperson in order to select the most persuasive character. This study investigates the effects of a spokesperson's accent on spokesperson's perceived credibility a...

Buyer Behaviour does not occur in isolation, but within a larger social context. The family being a social unit, its members are constantly influenced by a number of external agencies, including peers, friends and relatives. This paper investigates how interpersonal orientation of spouses affects their roles, children's and others' roles in five su...

Although widely acclaimed as one of the most important determinant of an individual's behavior, reference group influence is hardly explored in the services sector. This study investigated reference group influence on services using a research paradigm originally proposed by Bearden and Etzel (1982), who recognized that social visibility and exclus...

Service quality has received considerable attention from marketers. However, current measures of service quality do not adequately capture customers' perceptions of service quality for highly service oriented technical products retailing. This study explored the usefulness of SERVPERF, the perceptions component of SERVQUAL and a retail service qual...

Current measures of service quality do not effectively capture customers’ perceptions of service quality for different types of retail stores. Explores the usefulness of SERVPERF, the perceptions component of SERVQUAL and a retail service quality scale (the DTR scale) in measuring the service quality of different product-service retail environments...

With the surge in the number of working wives, the decision to hire a housemaid is becoming important for most families. This study examines the roles played by husbands, wives, children and 'others’ in the selection process of a housemaid, and hence determines the dominant decision-maker. In addition, cluster analysis was used to segment the sampl...

Family roles in deciding household purchases have intrigued marketers for a long time, with researchers calling for more studies on the subject - especially those which look into the roles played by children and others in the decision process. This paper investigates the relative influence of the husband, wife, children, and others in 5 sub-decisio...

Current measures of service quality do not adequately capture customers' perceptions of service quality for highly service oriented technical products. This study explored the usefulness of several scales in measuring the service quality of electronic goods retailers. A promising modified scale was generated by factor analysis on the data collected...