Modeling customer value perceptions in cross-cultural business markets

Even as customer value research in business-to-business markets burgeons, scholars still circumscribe its progress to studies performed in domestic, Western markets and call attention to the ongoing lack of consensus for how to model customer value. To advance the validity and usefulness of this emerging core construct in marketing, this study investigates the measurement equivalence and modeling of customer value perceptions with business managers across five culturally-diverse countries. Analyses draw clarity to the divergent modeling of customer value in the literature by exploring alternative measures and model specifications within structural equations modeling (SEM) and partial least squares (PLS). Comparisons of eight models reveal several valid and invalid conceptualizations reported previously in the literature and generate guidance for managers and scholars modeling customer value in various research contexts. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.