The cultural determinants of international business loyalty: a case study of Japanese and Portuguese firms

Abstract

In business-to-business markets, customers’ loyalty is critical to success, although its building process may be different from consumer markets. Not only do we propose to investigate B2B loyalty but also how this construct occurs across cultures, i.e., is B2B loyalty affected by culture? Preliminary research results indicate that Japanese companies will change foreign supplier more easily than Portuguese companies as Japanese society is very competitive and has higher levels of ethnocentrism. Based on preliminary interviews and a literature review we propose that masculinity, ethnocentrism and suppliers’ cultural interaction capabilities are antecedents of cross-cultural customers’ loyalty.