Cultural effects on perception and cognition:integrating recent findings and reviewing implications for consumer research

Research increasingly suggests that cultural differences may account for variation in cross-cultural consumer reactions to several phenomena of interest to marketing scholars and practitioners, including consumer expectations, evaluations and reactions to service (Zhang, Beatty and Walsh 2008), or attitudes to consumerism in general (Tse, Belk and Zhou 1989). Despite the growing interest – focusing mainly on consumers’ behaviors – relatively little research has examined cross-cultural differences or similarities in pre-behavioral processes such as perception and cognition – with little attempt aiming at explaining, synthesizing and extending existing evidence, especially in the light of the latest developments. Given the central role played by perception and cognition in subjective human experience and eventual behavior (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1999), studying cross-cultural differences in pre-behavioral domains is important in order to ultimately understand differences in cross-cultural consumer behaviors.