Cross-cultural differences in survey response patterns

The existence of variable response styles represents a major threat to the correct interpretation of market research findings. In international marketing this threat is further increased due to samples of respondents from different cultural backgrounds. In this paper we (1) extend the investigation of differences in cross-cultural response styles by studying full response patterns instead of extreme values, (2) quantify the extent of the potential mistake of not accounting for cross-cultural differences in response behaviour, and (3) present a simple way of testing whether or not data sets from various cultural backgrounds can be used without correcting for cross-cultural response styles.