International Marketers’ Quality-of-Life (QOL) Orientation: A Cross-Cultural Study

This paper reports on the development and validation of a measure of quality-of-life (QOL) orientation of international marketers. QOL orientation in international marketing refers to marketers’ disposition to make decisions to enhance the well-being of consumers in foreign markets while preserving the well-being of other stakeholders. Marketers= QOL orientation was hypothesized to be predicted by moral idealism, moral relativism, and ethnocentrism, which in turn are predicted by nationality. Specifically, it was hypothesized that the higher the QOL orientation of international managers the higher their moral idealism, the higher their moral relativism, and the lower their ethnocentrism. Also, it was hypothesized that American managers are likely to score higher on moral relativism but lower on moral idealism compared to their Korean counterparts. Also, Korean managers were expected to be more ethnocentric than American managers. Date were collected from business professionals enrolled in MBA programs both from the U.S. and Korea. Results were mostly supportive of the hypothesized model, thus providing some nomological validation to the QOL orientation measure.