Suscetibilidade para a cultura de consumo global sob a ótica de marcas globais: um estudo de caracteŕısticas comuns entre culturas baseado na teoria clássica e na teoria de resposta ao item

More than half of the world population lives in towns and cities which have been directly and immediately influenced by globalization. In this scenario, many multinational companies are changing their brand portfolios in favor of global brands. This situation arises the concept of global consumer culture - a set of symbols related to consumption and behaviors that are commonly understood, but not necessarily shared, by consumers and businesses around the world. This concept depends on the susceptibility to global consumer culture (SCCG), a characteristic or latent trait of consumers that varies across individuals and is reflected in the consumers willingness or trends to purchase and consume global brands. According to the literature reviewed, this trait is related to the trend of global consumption, quality perception, social prestige, social responsibility, brand credibility, perceived risk and cost of information stored. It is in this context that this thesis will distinguish and verify the impact of latent traits of the susceptibility to global consumer culture (SCCG) of consumers from different cultures (countries) in the acquisition of global brands. For this purpose, a questionnaire was administered via the Internet, through a snowball sampling, aimed at students and business professionals from different countries. The data, a total of 467 valid questionnaires were analyzed under two approaches: (1) Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Item Response Theory (IRT). Both are justified by the constant literature questioning about the use of statistical techniques applied to scales assumed to be interval, but which in reality are ordinal (Likert). The results were divided into three parts. The first one, at the level of the measurement model, it was found a positive relationship between the subjacent constructs to the SCCG construct. The second one, at the structural model level, found that the SCCG construct precedes the global brand purchase intention. Finally, the TRI approach was chosen because it presents major advantages over the TCT, as there is no invariant effects on the framework relations proposed compared to the four countries, but there are some cases when compared to pairs of countries. Overall, this thesis provides a theoretical and empirical contribution due to a measurable framework of the susceptibility to global consumption culture, which reflects consumers' desire to acquire and use global brands. The thesis concludes stating the findings, implications, limitations and future directions of the proposed framework and emphasizes the use of the IRT approach as a complement to the TCT approach, widely used in consumer behavior.