A Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Need for Uniqueness in Malaysia and the United States.

SOCIAL psychology; DECISION making; SOCIAL sciences; PROBLEM solving; PRODUCT management

The article presents a study that was conducted to investigate the possibility that the need for uniqueness varies in form across cultures. Consumer decision making for new product adoption or nonadoption by consumers is among the most actively researched topics in the social sciences in terms of number of publications. The need for uniqueness is postulated to be environmentally based, so there is no reason to expect that it will necessarily exist in the same form in all societies. In fact, no evidence exists for the intersocietal nature of this need. The goal of this research is to examine the form of the need for uniqueness across two cultures by comparing the scores on need for uniqueness of samples from two different cultures, that existing in the midwestern United States and the Malay culture.