THE CULTURAL VALUES OF MALAYSIAN CONSUMERS

Abstract

Very few studies have been conducted in Malaysia to comprehensively focus on the Malaysian culture as a whole. The few studies that have been done attempted to look at the differences in values between the Malays, Chinese and Indians. This study attempts to study the Malaysian culture as a whole and try to classify them according to the cultural values classification provided by previous researchers. The six values proposed are divided into six categories of values; theoretical value, economic value, aesthetic value, social value, political value and religious value. A total of 662 respondents chosen through snowball sampling method were surveyed in the study. The results indicated that a higher percentage of Malaysians as a whole have high scores for religious value as well as political values. A higher percentage of Malaysians have low scores for theoretical and aesthetic values while the percentages are quite similar for high and low scores for economic value, and social value. The regression analyses showed that demography have significant relationships with all dimensions of cultural values with the highest r2 at 0.16 for religious values. The results of this research do support previous studies on cultural values in the region.

Keywords: cultural values, Malaysian consumers