| This thesis investigates cross-cultural differences in brand cognitive structures. Understanding brand cognitive structures has been an important area of research in marketing as the way people organize information in their minds affects the retrieval, usage, and encoding of brand information. However, despite extensive research in this area, research on brand cognitive structures across cultures has been limited. This thesis aims to fill this gap in the literature by examining how brand cognitive structures may differ across cultures.; It is proposed that differences in field dependency across cultures suggest that Easterners and Westerners would structure brand information differently in their minds. Specifically, it is argued that since Westerners are more field independent, their brand cognitive structures should be more abstract (or global). They are more likely to generalize information from product experiences to the entire brand category. In contrast, as Easterners are more field dependent, their brand cognitive structures should be more concrete (or local). They are more likely to focus on individuating information and to store separate beliefs for each product.; In addition, it is also proposed that product similarity (more specifically, taxonomic similarity and relational similarity), need for precision, and expertise moderate this structural difference across cultures. To test the hypotheses, four studies were conducted. Using property verification tasks, the analysis examined the extent to which priming participants with context products facilitated their responses to target products. Results from all four experiments demonstrated strong support for the hypotheses. |
