Several important contributions to both marketing theory
and practice are made. First, aspects of work by Chandon et al.
(2000) are replicated to assess the generality of the
congruency framework of sales promotion effectiveness.
Second, the work of Chandon et al. (2000) is extended –
they attempted a cross-national comparison, but did not
explicitly look at the impact of culture. The study also
develops work by Lowe and Corkindale (1998) who examined
the impact of cultural values across a range of marketing
activities. Third, measures of culture at the ethnic-group level
provide evidence for the popular assumption that consumer
differences do indeed exist at this level. Fourth, the study
contributes to theory development by providing further
validation of a relatively new scale for measuring cultural
differences in a consumer context, namely the CVSCALE
(Yoo et al., 2001; Yoo and Donthu, 2002). Finally, the study
provides insights for product managers in the design of sales
promotion strategies. It addresses the issue of whether to
standardise or localise sales promotions between targeted ethnic markets. It also offers insights for managers into the
applicability (or otherwise) of the congruency framework for
sales promotion.