A cross-cultural application of the Affective Response to Consumption scale: Investigating US-American and Austrian passengers on long-haul flights

Satisfaction and other emotional responses are particularly sensitive to cultural influences, complicating cross-cultural investigations. In highly competitive industries, providing outstanding service encounters to consumers is important, as highly positive experiences strongly affect future behavior. This study presents the first bilingual investigation of Affective Response to Consumption (ARC). The ARC scale examines a broad range of highly unfavorable to highly favorable reactions to consumption experiences with an emphasis on differentiating higher satisfaction levels. Employing ARC, US-American (English) and Austrian (German) passengers' satisfaction levels are investigated on long-haul flights. Rasch Modeling (RM) helps when culturally influenced interpretations of terms must be taken into account, extending ARC to cross-cultural contexts. While several emotional terms included in the scale are interpreted differently by US-Americans and Austrians, sufficient common terms exist allowing a meaningful combination of English and German ARC scale versions. The results highlight the importance of understanding the scale equivalence across languages and cultures.