Same hierarchy, different weights: a cross-national conjoint analysis of packaging cue evaluation across collectivistic and individualistic consumer contexts

Purpose This study investigates how extrinsic packaging cues, namely material, colour and logo placement, are evaluated by consumers in culturally contrasting national contexts, drawing on cue utilization theory (CUT) and Hofstede's individualism–collectivism dimension. Framing packaging as a multi-cue branding medium, the study examines how consumers hierarchically weight functional and symbolic cues under conditions of limited information. Design/methodology/approach A two-stage quantitative design was adopted. Stage 1 employed expert judgement (n = 27) to identify packaging attribute levels. Stage 2 deployed a choice-based conjoint experiment across two nationally contrasting samples: India (n = 278; collectivistic orientation) and Spain (n = 295; individualistic orientation). The resulting choice data were analysed using conditional logit models in R. Findings A consistent cue hierarchy emerged across both national contexts: material dominates in both, though bootstrapped confidence intervals reveal a two-tier structure in India, where colour and logo placement are not statistically distinguishable, compared to a fully confirmed three-tier hierarchy in Spain. Whilst the hierarchy's order is invariant, its internal weighting varies meaningfully across national contexts. In the Spanish country context, material dominates more strongly, consistent with analytic processing associated with individualistic orientations. In the Indian country context, logo placement carries comparatively greater weight, consistent with the social signalling function of brand identity in collectivistic national contexts. Originality/value This study extends CUT by addressing a question the theory has not previously resolved, namely what determines not merely which cues are diagnostic, but how steeply the diagnostic hierarchy is tiered. The empirical findings demonstrate that country-level cultural orientation functions as the parameter governing the internal spacing of CUT's diagnostic hierarchy, preserving the hierarchy's order across national contexts whilst systematically varying the magnitude of the gaps between cues. This constitutes a theoretically precise and falsifiable extension of CUT.