Agnes Montgomery is the director of marketing for Ideal Plastics, Inc. Ideal has distributors all over the world. Last year, Agnes developed a system for measuring the distributors' satisfaction levels with Ideal on 20 different dimensions. Each dimension of company service, such as "Return Policy" and "Ease of Placing an Order," was evaluated by the distributors on a semantic differential scale ranging from "Very Satisfied" to "Very Dissatisfied." Now, several months after implementing the system, Agnes has data to analyze. She noticed that the Asian countries seemed to have different means from the countries in the UK, United States, and western Europe. Agnes looked carefully at the actual scores and saw that Asian distributors seemed to have much stronger feelings, either positively or negatively. Agnes should:

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Agnes should view the results between countries with major cultural differences cautiously because different cultural influences affect how individuals respond to scales. It is important to take into account cultural differences when interpreting survey data, as individual responses can be influenced by factors such as language, values, and social norms. Conducting further exploratory research within the Asian division may also be helpful in understanding the specific cultural influences at play. However, taking aggressive action based solely on mean scores could potentially overlook the underlying cultural factors that are contributing to the differences in satisfaction levels. Additionally, it is not appropriate to view the results among countries with similar cultures cautiously because differences in means on service dimensions can still be indicative of real differences in company performance.

Agnes Montgomery Is the Director of Marketing for Ideal Plastics