Cultural Differences in Consumer Impatience
Published 8/1/2005
Author: Haipeng (Allan) Chen, Sharon Ng, and Akshay R. Rao
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Executive Summary
This article examines the issue of whether the level of impatience and desire for expedited delivery varies across cultural contexts, a topic that is likely to be of considerable interest to corporations (both multinational or domestic) attempting to appeal to diverse cultures. On the basis of a review of the cultural psychology literature, the authors predict that people of Western culture are relatively less patient and therefore discount the future to a greater degree than do people of Eastern culture; thus, Western people value immediate consumption relatively more. Furthermore, on the basis of regulatory focus theory, the authors predict that when Eastern people are faced with the threat of a delay in receiving a product (i.e., a prevention loss), they will be more impatient, whereas when Western people are faced with the threat of not being able to enjoy a product early (i.e., a promotion loss), their impatience will increase. This enhanced impatience was manifested in a preference for expedited consumption of a product purchased online in two studies. In the first study, “bicultural” Singaporean participants were primed with visual stimuli that pertained to one of their two cultures, and differences in willingness to pay for expedited delivery were observed. In addition, the authors established the key interaction finding—that differences in willingness to pay can also be generated within a culture—by framing the outcome as a delay in or a hastening of the consumption opportunity. In the second study, the authors use a scale to measure impatience and replicate the results of the first study, finding evidence in support of the process-based explanation for the interaction between culture and message framing. Differences in attention appear to account for differences in impatience.
The research has implications reagarding firm’s ability to price discriminate across cultures by using appropriate message frames. First, different cultures may be primed in bicultural people through the use of appropriate cues. In addition the priming of these different cultures has important practical significance in terms of impatience and willingness to pay. Second, firms may wish to consider how to frame the message associated with their delivery options. In the United States (and perhaps in other Western cultures that emphasize promotion goals), the suggestion that using standard delivery limits the early enjoyment of the product could yield higher degrees of impatience and associated willingness to pay for expedited delivery. In Eastern culture, messages that emphasize how standard delivery extends the waiting time for the product to arrive could yield enhanced impatience and associated willingness to pay.
Third, the authors observe differing levels of impatience across cultures. If it is true that the future is discounted less in Eastern culture, financial instruments and investments that emphasize long-term benefits are likely to prove more attractive, whereas short-term returns are likely to be preferred in Western culture. For example, whereas savings for education and retirement involve immediate sacrifice for the sake of future benefits, revolving credit usage has the effect of borrowing from the future for immediate consumption. Therefore, the general premise that people of Eastern culture are less impatient and exhibit a smaller discount rate than do people of Western culture is also consistent with anecdotal evidence that Asian people value education, have a higher savings rate, and are less likely to use credit cards.
Biography
Haipeng (Allan) Chen is Assistant Professor in Marketing at the University of Miami. He received his bachelor’s degree (honors) in Mechanical Engineering from Shandong University of Engineering (Zibo, China), his master’s degree in Applied Linguistics from Zhejiang University (Hangzhou, China), and his doctoral degree in Business Administration from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. Chen conducts research in the area of behavioral decision theory, and his research interests focus on examining the information-processing and decision-making processes of individual consumers and managers and identifying cross-cultural differences in those processes. His research has been published in Marketing Science and has been presented at various conferences, including the 2004 NBER Monetary Economics Program Meeting, the 2004 SCP Winter Meeting, the 2003 INFORMS-Cornell Pricing Conference, the 2002 North American Winter Meeting of the Econometric Society, and the ACR 2000 Conference.
Sok Ling (Sharon) Ng is an assistant professor in the Nanyang Business School at Nanyang Technological University. She has a bachelor’s degree in Business (first-class honors) from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and a doctoral degree from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses primarily how culture affects the way brand information is structured in memory and how people respond to brand extensions. In addition, she also examines cross-cultural differences in other aspects of consumer behavior, such as counterfactual thinking.
Akshay R. Rao is Chair and General Mills Professor of Marketing in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. He has a bachelor’s degree in Economics (honors) from Madras University in India, a master’s degree in Business from Xavier Institute in India, and a doctoral degree in Marketing from Virginia Tech. A winner of the 1987 Robert Ferber Award and the 2000 Harold H. Maynard award, he has published papers on pricing and brand management in various scholarly journals, such as Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Business, Journal of Marketing Research, and Marketing Science, as well as managerially oriented journals, such as Harvard Business Review and Sloan Management Review. He currently serves on the editorial review board of Journal of Marketing and Journal of Consumer Psychology. He is working on several research projects that examine the economic underpinnings of marketing actions, such as the signaling role of low introductory prices. He is also conducting research on preference reversals due to variations in the sequence in which information is encountered.
J Marketing Research, Volume 42, Number 3, August 2005
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