Abstract:
While French consumers' adoption of broadband may slightly lag UK and Australian
uptake, their adoption of various interactive technologies is rapidly
increasing. The multi-dimensional 19-item consumer SAVVY scale helps to assess
consumer competency - including technological sophistication, marketing
literacy, and networking - and can be used for population profiling. The scale
is applied to a sample of French consumers (in French language) and a sample of
UK consumers (in English). The findings indicate translational equivalence for
the French-language version, as well as good fit and reasonable stability of the
scale in the French and UK replications. Thus the conceptual equivalence of
"savvy" across cultures is supported. However, further analysis indicates that a
parsimonious 10-item measurement model in the French context may be justified.
The findings have implications for conceptualisation and assessment of consumer
savvy across cultures. The implications for research and practice, as well as
the study limitations, are discussed.