Retail buyer beliefs, attitude and behavior toward pioneer and me-too follower brands: A comparative study of Japan and the USA

One potential source, of pioneer brand advantage, is retail buyers' preference for pioneer brawls. A model of pioneer brawl advantage, with retailers developed in the USA was tested in Japan, as a replication and cross-cultural extension. This provides the first empirical study of Japanese retail buyer beliefs, attitude, and behavior toward new offerings, and the first direct statistical comparison of US and Japanese retail buying behavior in the marketing literature. Similarities and differences in pioneer brawl advantage, with retailers between Japan and the USA are discussed Results from a survey of buyers from Japan's largest supermarket chains suggest that pioneer brawl advantage, is about as strong for them as for their US counterparts, though for somewhat different reasons. The survey's results were, analyzed in two ways (through a multi-attribute attitude, model and a PLS causal model), with results that complement and corroborate one another. Data were standardized to deal with potential extreme response style bias.