Special Session: Measurement Invariance and Innovation in Cross-Cultural Research: Revisiting Validity in an Interconnected World: An Abstract

Abstract

Cross-border collaborations are becoming increasingly important for innovative marketing in an interconnected world. We know from the international marketing, business, and cross-cultural literatures that, in practice, research projects demand a degree of local adaptation. A key challenge for marketers is to create methodological constructs that capture these local differences. In this regard, the success of future innovations will be dependent upon the research collaborations that we set up and the capabilities that they foster through global innovations. The session presents a number of specific research methodological topics that relate directly to cross-cultural market and innovation research, in the context of how understanding the challenges of achieving metric equivalence can create greater impact of our research and the collaborations that we set up. Using a combination of topical themes, the panel members will share insights from their own experiences and will invite the audience to contribute so as to create a forum for discussing issues such as:

• Managerial relevance of cross-cultural research.

• What do we need to know to create evaluation methods to ensure equivalence and enhance validity and innovation internationally?

• Does the meaning of being innovative change with the level of development in a culture?

• What is the meaning of generalizability in cross-cultural research?

• Does the choice of test measure what it is supposed to measure?

• Sample relevance and generalizing to target populations.

• What to do when scales display a lack of invariance?

• Multi-cultural psychometric validation and testing moderation by culture.

• Pitfalls in cross-cultural research.

• Cultural and linguistic differences between the populations studied.

• Overdependence on developed countries to validate scales.

• Scales that don’t work across cultures. Is there a pan-cultural scale?

• Advertising across cultures.

The panel members for this session are experts in their fields and have extensive experience in working with a range of marketing journals.