ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of conformity to social pressure has profound implications for individuals’ social and buying behavior. Since Asch (1951), many social psychology and marketing researchers have explored the extent and characteristics of conformity to social pressure in a variety of contexts. Although these studies demonstrated that the conformity is widespread behavior, replications of the Asch-type experiment in various countries showed a disconcerting level of conformity. These results obviously imply the operation of country or over country characteristics in the social conformity process. In this review, I suggest a cultural values argument (CVA) that conformity is manifestation of certain cultural values. Based on extensive review of social psychology and marketing literature on conformity, I have documented the history of conformity studies and identified two major motivations of social conformity (i.e., self-image enhancing vs. information-seeking motivations) that govern social conformity process. Then I hypothesized that three cultural values (i.e., collectivism/individualism, uncertainty intolerance, and Confucian values) are moderating the social conformity impact in terms of magnitude and motivation types (i.e., self-image enhancing vs. information-seeking motivations).
