Does Culture Matter? A Cross-Cultural Study of Executives’ Choice, Decisiveness, and Risk Adjustment in International Marketing

The authors investigate whether a manager's home culture significantly influences his or her international marketing decisions. They also examine whether the impact of home culture diminishes in an open economy with intense exposure to international markets, giving way to a process of “globalization.” Decision making in four simulated international marketing situations was studied with executives from the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Canada. The findings confirm that home culture has predictable, significant effects on the decision making of the executives from the People's Republic of China and Canada. Chinese executives from Hong Kong were influenced by a combination of Western and Chinese cultural norms.