ABSTRACT
The cultural constructs of individualism/collectivism and the independent/interdependent self-construals associated with them are given special attention because extensive research has demonstrated the implications of these distinctions for processes and outcomes relevant to consumer behavior. In recent years, research in consumer behavior has addressed a broadening set of cross-cultural issues and dimensions. The constructs of individualism and collectivism represent the most broadly used dimensions of cultural variability for cross-cultural comparison. The conceptualizations of individualism and collectivism, and independence and interdependence, have historically been broad and multidimensional, summarizing a host of differences in focus of attention, self-definitions, motivations, emotional connections to in-groups, and belief systems and behavioral patterns. The horizontal/vertical distinction emerges from the observation that American or British individualism differs from, say, Norwegian or Danish individualism in much the same way that Japanese or Korean collectivism differs from the collectivism of the Israeli kibbutz.
