Customers Research and Equivalence Measurement in Factor Analysis

Factors Analysis is often tied to specific properties of population and its culture characteristics. If measurement is applied from population to another, then extracted factors may hard to be equally compared on the reflective basic level, unless all conditions of invariance measurement are met. Hence, implementation of customers research and any inter-cultural studies require a multi-cultural model describing statistical differences in both cultures with invariance as underlying assumption. In the article we implement a model for analysis of customers’ personal values pertaining to hedonic consumption aspects in two culturally opposite populations. We conducted survey in two countries and the following cities: Poland (Poznan) and The Netherlands (Rotterdam and Tilburg) with randomly prepared samples with youth representatives on both sides. This model permitted us for testing invariance measurement under cross-group constraints and thus examining structural equivalence of latent variables - values.