Is National Culture an Appropriate Unit of Analysis in Cross-Cultural Research?

The purpose of this paper is to address a specific controversial issue in the cross-cultural field: in cross-cultural studies, regarding whether the country or the region should be used as the unit of analysis. Cross-cultural similarities and differences play an important role in many areas of life. Researchers from various fields have been actively dealing with this topic for decades. Based on the research methods of Minkov and Hofstede (2012), and using the latest data from the World Values ​​Survey, based on the Schwartz values, this study analyzes the differences in cultural values​among 239 regions of 19 countries taken from five groups: Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Arab World, and Anglo countries. By analyzing the aggregation of homogeneous and heterogeneous clusters, this paper examines the judgment basis for and use of analytical units in cross-cultural research. The results show that cultural differences within some countries can be larger (e.g, China, Peru, Russia, etc.) or smaller (e.g, United States, Jordan, etc.) than differences among countries. We have also found a pattern of national cluster aggregation will be changed over time. This research provides a reference basis for effectively distinguishing the types of differences in national and regional values and provides theoretical information that will be useful in the formulation of market strategies among multinational companies.