A cross-cultural study on the consumers’ adoption of PSS offerings in the mobility and fashion fields between Norway and Singapore

This master’s thesis studies the impacts of cultural values on consumers’ attitudes towards Product-Service Systems (PSSs). This study compares people’s opinions regarding PSS models in two industries - mobility and fashion - and two countries - Norway and Singapore. Our findings indicate that, in both countries, financial and convenience considerations are central to consumers’ decisions. In Singapore, people worry about the impact of their decisions on their social status, which constitutes a barrier for PSS marketers, especially in the mobility sector. In Norway, consumers show an interest in these models when perceived as sustainable. Although cars and clothes are associated with different habits and symbols, in both countries, people said that cars were more suited to a PSS format than clothes, defending this position with shared arguments. This suggests that, even though cultural values, especially in terms of power distance and femininity, influence people’s willingness to adopt PSSs, other contextual, individual and cross-cultural elements should not be overlooked.