A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Perceived Risk in British and French CD Purchasing

A study proposes minimum conditions for meaningful cross-cultural comparisons of consumer behavior in terms of concept, culture, and context and compares risk-reducing behavior among a sample of UK and French compact disk purchasers. Few cross-cultural studies have been truly guided by these 3 considerations, especially in the standardization literature. The results show minor differences in risk-reducing behavior between the 2 samples, although the variation seen in some individual strategies is potentially significant in behavioral and marketing terms. The highly-standardized purchase context allowed some limited examination of Levitt's (1983) notion of emerging homogeneity of tastes for which partial support is found.