Measuring consumers’ perceptions of business ethicality on price, product, and service domains
Cross Cultural & Strategic Management
ISSN: 2059-5794
Article publication date: 19 September 2019
Issue publication date: 22 November 2019
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine consumer perceptions across various countries, and uses content analysis in order to compare individual countries’ perceptions of ethicality over three business domains: price, product and service.
Design/methodology/approach
The data encompasses measurements from 18 countries including the USA and countries in Eastern and Western Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and the gross national income purchasing power parity were explored to explain the differences in focus between countries.
Findings
The results indicate that Mexico and Argentina place a higher focus on price, while Russia, China and India place a greater focus on the product element. In terms of ethical perceptions of service, only Brazil places high focus on this domain. The results indicated that uncertainty avoidance was significant for five of the six countries focusing on price, suggesting that price provides a level of certainty and therefore less ambiguity.
Originality/value
The importance of this study is based on the idea that consumer trust is vital to the efficient running of economic activity.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Conflict of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. Ethical approval: All procedures performed in this study, involving human participants, were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or corporate standards. Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in this study. Funding: This study received no funding.
Citation
Tsalikis, J., Van Solt, M. and Seaton, B. (2019), "Measuring consumers’ perceptions of business ethicality on price, product, and service domains", Cross Cultural & Strategic Management, Vol. 26 No. 4, pp. 451-466. https://doi.org/10.1108/CCSM-01-2019-0017
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited