Cross-Cultural Analysis of Nutraceutical Perceptions: Formulation Preferences, Safety Beliefs, and Purchase Behaviour Across Arabic-Speaking and International Consumers

This study extends a four-paper series on nutraceutical consumer behaviour in the MENA region by comparing formulation preferences, purchase behaviour, safety perceptions, and price sensitivity across Jordanian, other Arabic-speaking, and non-Arabic-speaking consumers (n = 1,000). A central methodological contribution is the demonstration that cultural group and survey language are deeply confounded in cross-cultural health-consumer research: uncontrolled models produced both false positive and false negative cultural group effects within the same dataset. After controlling for survey language, attitudinal outcomes — including price sensitivity, herbal safety endorsement, and certification importance — generalised across the Arabic-speaking world, while formulation preference and purchase channel were Jordan-specific. The gender effect on supplement choice was cross-culturally homogeneous. Nutraceutical awareness was invariant across all groups. Findings inform both pan-Arabic and market-localised positioning strategies, and the sequential modelling framework proposed here offers a practical template for multilingual cross-cultural survey research.