Introduction

In today's business environment, the innovation process in many organizations is accomplished through joint company-consumer involvement (Hofstetter et al., 2021), and consumers have more opportunities than ever to participate in creative tasks (Liao et al., 2021; Mehta et al., 2017). Consumer creativity generates ideas and suggestions for new products and services, which in turn helps companies provide better solutions for their markets (Mehta et al., 2017). Recent research has been devoted to discussing different aspects of consumer creativity (Miceli & Raimondo, 2020), including those concerning consumers' creative consumption behavior (Burroughs & Glen Mick, 2004), the influence of environmental factors on consumer creativity (Mehta et al., 2012), consumers' motivation to participate in the creative process (Broderick et al., 2011), external incentives (Mehta et al., 2017) and the influence of psychological intentions (Herd & Mehta, 2019) on consumer creativity. These studies have enriched the understanding of consumer creativity but have overlooked an important feature of business activity in the context of globalization, where an increasing number of consumers have multicultural experiences that influence consumer behavior (Yang et al., 2019). This characteristic of consumers raises the important question of how multiculturalism affects consumer creativity.

The basic idea behind the influence of culture on creativity is that an individual's creativity is closely related to the cultural environment in which the individual lives (Chiu & Kwan, 2010; Chua et al., 2015). An important advance in research in recent years has been the consideration of the impact of multicultural experiences on creativity, based on the idea that cross-cultural contexts provide access to different ideas, promote openness to new perspectives, and help people connect apparently different ideas to generate new ones (Chua, 2018). Existing research has found that at the individual level, individuals with foreign life experiences (Leung et al., 2008), with multicultural identities (Mok & Morris, 2010), who can speak multiple languages (Tadmor & Tetlock, 2006), and with multicultural networks (Chua, 2018) exhibit higher levels of creativity. At the team level, multicultural experiences have an additional positive impact on the creative output of the team (Tadmor et al., 2012). At the organizational level, multicultural experiences can enhance a company's ability to create and innovate (Godart et al., 2015; Santangelo & Phene, 2021).

In marketing, companies have crossed organizational boundaries and national boundaries to perceive consumers as a potential resource to enhance their innovation advantage (Hofstetter et al., 2021; Luo & Toubia, 2015; Stephen et al., 2016), but we still know very little about how consumers think creatively in the context of globalization (Chua,2015). Although many studies provide evidence that multicultural experiences enhance individual creativity, there is still the possibility that multicultural experiences limit individual creativity (Chua & Jin, 2020; Maddux et al., 2020). Multicultural experiences do not enhance creativity under all conditions (Chen et al., 2016; Maddux et al., 2020) and there is a lack of understanding of how different dimensions of culture determine the impact of multicultural experiences on consumer creativity (Chua et al., 2015; Maddux et al., 2020).

This paper addresses gaps in existing research by discussing the relationship between culture and consumer creativity based on the dual perspectives of multiculturalism and loose-tight culture. Our first research question is how do multicultural experiences influence consumer creativity? We apply cognitive complexity theory to explain the impact of multicultural experiences on consumer creativity. Since multicultural experiences affect individuals' information processing, which is the domain studied by cognitive complexity theory, cognitive complexity theory can be introduced to explain the mechanism of multicultural experiences' influence on consumers' creativity.

The second research question is, under what conditions do multicultural experiences influence consumer creativity? Specifically, we analyzed the boundary conditions of the influence effects of different cultural dimensions on multicultural experiences at the level of social norms. Individuals in tight culture scenario have a high sense of responsibility to conform and comply with normative expectations in order to avoid facing punishment or other negative outcomes (Gelfand et al., 2011; Harrington & Gelfand, 2014). In loose culture scenario, individuals acquire idealized self-direction and focus on the development of things and get positive results (Gelfand & Jackson, 2016). It follows that a loose-tight culture based on social norms may encourage different psychological adaptations at the individual level (Chua et al., 2015) and is an important cultural dimension that influences consumer creativity.

We emphasize the importance of studying the issue of consumer creativity in the marketing field for two reasons. On the one hand, although creativity is one of the concepts widely studied in different areas of social sciences (Miceli & Raimondo, 2020), research on creativity is an open question, and external factors affecting creativity exist in different fields, such as creativity in the field of advertising and charitable giving (Mehta & Dahl, 2019; Miceli & Raimondo, 2020; Rosengren et al., 2020; Xu et al., 2021). On the other hand, marketing theory has described the process of consumer involvement in innovation as a coproduction (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004), and more importantly, the study of this phenomenon has driven a paradigm shift from a product-led logic to a service-led logic (Vargo & Lusch, 2004, 2008), where consumers become cocreators of value, actively participating in the entire value creation process from product conception to final consumption (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). This paradigm shift in research in the marketing process provides new opportunities and avenues for research on creativity to understand the mechanisms and conditions that shape consumer creativity (Mehta & Dahl, 2019).

The main theoretical contributions of this paper are the following. First, combining multicultural experiences with loose-tight culture provides a new perspective for the study of culture and consumer creativity. Second, the dimensions of the study of the relationship between loose-tight culture and consumer creativity are expanded. This paper expands the study of culture and consumer creativity from the cultural value dimension to the social norm dimension and examines the influence of loose-tight culture based on social norms on the relationship between multicultural experiences and consumer creativity. Third, the mechanism of influence of multicultural experiences on consumer creativity is explained based on cognitive complexity, and the variation of this influence mechanism on the loose-tight cultural dimension is examined. Theoretically, it reveals that multiculturalism influences the cognitive process of consumer creativity, and further, it is found that loose-tight culture can influence this cognitive process, making an incremental contribution to the study of the relationship between loose-tight culture and creativity.

Conceptual model and research hypothesis

Conceptual model

According to the generation-exploration model of consumer creativity (Moreau & Dahl, 2005), through multicultural experiences, consumers demonstrate a mental readiness to seek and acquire ideas from different sources (Leung et al., 2008) and are able to be exposed to a wide variety of new ideas, norms and practices on a continuous basis, which can provide more cognitive content and scripts to the idea generation process (Weisberg, 1999). At the same time, consumers have a deeper and more complex perception through multicultural experiences and are able to interpret information from different perspectives and obtain satisfactory solutions during the creative exploration stage (Moreau & Dahl, 2005). According to cognitive complexity theory, the more information individuals receive and process, the more complex their self-perception becomes (Bieri, 1966; Ling, 1969; van Seggelen-Damen, 2013), and consumers develop a more refined cognitive structure during multicultural experiences (Zinkhan & Braunsberger, 2004). Cognitive complexity theory suggests that individuals' level of cognition depends on cognitive complexity (McArthur, & Charles, 1956), so consumers' complex cognitive structure plays a role in the completion of creative tasks, and their understanding of creative tasks becomes more comprehensive and profound, thus enabling them to come up with creative solutions. According to loose-tight culture theory, tight culture scenario has stronger social norms and low tolerance for behavioral deviations, while loose culture scenario has weak norms and high tolerance for behavioral deviations (Gelfand et al., 2011). Therefore, tight culture scenarios restrict individuals' behavior, and individuals actively conform to social norms, which hinders the possibility of individuals improving their cognitive complexity through multicultural experiences and limits their creativity (Janssen et al., 1998). In contrast, loose culture scenarios are more tolerant of changes, and individuals can enrich their cognitive structure through multicultural experiences and easily make behavioral choices that deviate from social norms, resulting in a higher level of creativity (Gino & Ariely, 2012).

Based on the above discussion, the theoretical framework constructed in this paper is shown in Fig. 1 below.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Conceptual Model Diagram

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Multicultural experiences and consumer creativity

Creativity is the ability to generate novel and useful ideas about a problem (Amabile, 1996). Consumer creativity has long been a topic of interest to marketers (Rosengren et al., 2020), and Hirschman defines "consumer creativity" as the ability of consumers to generate and form new ideas in the use of existing products (Harrington & Gelfand, 2014). The term, creative consumers, refers to individual consumers who are able to modify products accordingly and solve problems in the consumption process (Nuttavuthisit, 2010). However, as consumers have become an essential resource for companies (Vargo & Lusch, 2004), consumer creativity has not only been expressed in the consumer field with problem-solving ability, but more importantly, it has been expanded to co-creating products with companies (Miceli & Raimondo, 2020). Burroughs and Gentry further refined the concept of consumer creativity by defining it as the ability of consumers to create or understand outcomes (products, uses, ideas, etc.) that are novel and appropriate to a particular context (Burroughs & Glen Mick, 2004). After more than 30 years of consumer creativity research, the general view is that consumer creativity is not a trait of a few people, but the general ability of many people to generate new ideas, and is influenced by many factors.

The cognitive process theory of creativity involves two key cognitive inputs: the generative process and the exploratory process. The generative process is considered to be the initial mental representation used to create solutions (Finke et al., 1992) and includes the retrieval of existing structures from memory, the creation of associations and combinations within the retrieved structures and analogical transfer as a prelude to the creative product. The exploration process explores different meanings to help interpret a solution after the generation process is complete, which entails evaluating a structure from different contexts or perspectives to interpret it as a possible solution to a salient problem (Moreau & Dahl, 2005).

Multicultural experiences are experiences gained from all direct and indirect interactions with elements or members of a foreign culture (Leung et al., 2008). Multicultural experiences as a cognitive input play a positive role in both stages of the cognitive process of consumers, thus enhancing their creativity, and its positive impact is manifested in the following aspects. First, consumers learn new ideas and concepts from multicultural experiences. Consumers are exposed to behavioral and cognitive scripts for various situations and issues in multicultural experiences, which may be inputs to the idea generation process, allowing consumers to generate more ideas and create more novel combinations (Weisberg, 1999). Second, while consumers' established cultural concepts and practices provide a structured and routinized response to their environment, they limit creativity. When people acquire other concepts through experiences in other cultures, especially as they adapt their thoughts and behaviors to new environments, these cognitive structures may be unstable (Leung et al., 2008). Consumers who are able to incorporate more cognitive content into the idea generation process can more fully stimulate consumer creativity. Finally, after acquiring and successfully applying inconsistent ideas from other cultures, consumers with rich multicultural experiences may demonstrate psychological readiness to discover and acquire ideas from a variety of sources and thus be consistently exposed to a wide range of new ideas, norms and practices as inputs to the idea generation process (Leung & Chiu, 2008).

The positive impact of multicultural experiences on the exploration stage of consumer creativity entails a detailed explanation. On the one hand, multicultural experiences allow consumers to have a deeper perception of things, to recognize that the same form or surface behavior has different functions and meanings (Galinsky et al., 2006) and to make more reasonable interpretations of their ideas during the exploration phase. On the other hand, the process of multicultural experiences requires consumers to deal with ideas and perspectives that are different from their previous perceptions, and these inconsistent or even contradictory concepts or perspectives trigger the exploration of these interrelationships. The process of resolving inconsistent concepts may create more cognitive complexity for those consumers with multicultural experiences than for those individuals who have been exposed to only one culture or a limited set of cultural norms (Tadmor & Tetlock, 2006), thus multicultural experiences help consumers to assess structures from different contexts or perspectives and come up with satisfactory solutions for problems that need to be solved. Based on this, the following hypothesis is proposed in this paper.

  • H1: Multicultural experiences positively influence consumer creativity.

Mediating effects of cognitive complexity

According to cognitive complexity theory, an individual's cognitive level depends on the individual's cognitive complexity when performing different cognitive activities, such as problem solving, decision making and planning, while the more information the individual processes, the more complex the self-perception becomes (Bieri, 1966; Ling, 1969; van Seggelen-Damen, 2013). Multicultural experiences such as multicultural information processing (Jang, 2017; Tadmor et al., 2018) can increase consumers' cognitive complexity (Maddux et al., 2020), and an increase in consumers' cognitive complexity will lead to higher levels of creativity performance.

Multicultural experiences increase the level of cognitive complexity. First, the process of multicultural experiences requires the individual to understand cultural elements and developments effectively in the light of new cultural scenarios. Multicultural experiences stimulate individuals to develop strong internal cognitive needs, forcing them to develop new abilities or skills to increase cognitive complexity (van Seggelen-Damen, 2013). Second, in the process of multicultural experiences, individuals often perceive the vulnerability of powerlessness, lack of control and asymmetrical market exchange (Broderick et al., 2011), pay more attention to their inner feelings and engage in frequent thinking and reflection, and such thinking and reflection based on multicultural experiences can make their cognitive structure more complex (Bieri, 1966; Ling, 1969; van Seggelen-Damen, 2013). Finally, in the process of multicultural experiences, individuals use their own culture as a frame of reference, acquire new cognitive content, seek gaps in their own cognition, and question their own frame of reference to increase their openness to experience. Related research shows that openness to experience is an important antecedent of cognitive complexity (van Seggelen-Damen, 2013), and multicultural experiences can increase individuals' openness to experience. The more information consumers receive and process during multicultural experiences, the more complex their self-perception becomes, not only because of the stored content but also because of a more refined cognitive structure developed in the course of the multicultural experiences (Zinkhan & Braunsberger, 2004). Therefore, the process of multicultural experiences is more conducive to the development of complex information processing styles or abilities and thus an increased level of cognitive complexity than when consumers only engage in monocultural experiences.

Increased levels of cognitive complexity can enhance consumer creativity. Cognitive complexity refers to the complexity of the structure of an individual's cognitive system and refers to the structural and configurational refinement of new and existing information, describing the complexity of the cognitive structures used to organize and store cognitive content or can be understood as the ability to conceptualize human beings, objects, or concepts and ideas (Carrillat et al., 2010; Scott, 1979; Zinkhan & Braunsberger, 2004). Individuals' ability to process information varies according to their level of cognitive complexity; individuals with high cognitive complexity tend to look for a wider range of information, consider all relevant factors comprehensively, and use more information inputs to arrive at a solution to a problem, while individuals with low cognitive complexity use relatively little information to analyze the problem encountered, consider only one perspective and defend it rigorously (Adams-Webber, 1998). Research has established that individuals with high cognitive complexity interpret information in a multidimensional manner and integrate it better (Bartunek et al., 1983). In addition, cognitively complex individuals are able to synthesize relationships between different information, are more logical in their decision-making tasks, and invest more time in analyzing the information at hand. Therefore, consumers with complex cognition will have better creativity performance. Based on the above, the following hypothesis is proposed in this paper.

  • H2a: Multicultural experiences positively influence cognitive complexity.

  • H2b: Cognitive complexity positively influence consumer creativity.

  • H2c: Cognitive complexity partially mediates the relationship between multicultural experiences and consumer creativity.

The moderating effect of loose–tight culture

According to loose-tight culture theory, loose-tight culture is a relevant prerequisite for creativity, i.e., tight culture is characterized by strong social norms and low tolerance for deviant behavior, while loose culture has no universal social norms and is more tolerant of deviations from social norms; it allows individuals to socialize and develop psychological adaptations of corresponding characteristics, and these psychological adaptations influence creativity (Chua et al., 2015). Any creative idea is socially constructed in the domain where creative work takes place, and therefore, consumers are influenced by the loose-tight culture in translating the cognitive content acquired from multicultural experiences into creative expression.

The collection, processing, and evaluation of information by consumers in problem solving are closely linked to the loose-tight culture of society. In a tight culture social, there are fewer differences in cultural practices and knowledge transmission, transfer, and learning because deviation or risk-taking is not encouraged, causing people to become cautious and motivated to avoid mistakes thus reducing their tendency to try novel ideas (Muthukrishna & Henrich, 2016). Therefore, consumers in tight culture are more inclined to look for perspectives or elements from multicultural experiences that are compatible with their own cultural values and adopt adaptive solution strategies (Janssen et al., 1998), using established procedures to solve problems with caution, reliability, efficiency, and discipline based on their principles. In a loose culture social, where knowledge diffusion varies more and where a loose culture encourages bias and tolerance of error, these seemingly harmful errors in turn trigger radical innovation (Chua et al., 2019). Consumers in loose cultures are more interested in acquiring cultural elements or ideas from multicultural experiences that are different from their own cultural values, seek originality and adventure and are characterized by impracticality, lack of discipline, and disrespect for customs, incorporating ideas from different cultures into creative tasks (Gelfand et al., 2011). To give full play to their creativity, consumers need to challenge established paradigms and rules, ignore the constraints of the dominant paradigm, and obtain problem-solving ideas from outside the system that are different from their own cultural values; therefore, a loose culture is more conducive to consumer creativity, while a tight culture limits it. In addition, studies on creativity have shown that individuals who do not care about social norms and rules and are not bound by them are more creative (Gino & Ariely, 2012), whereas tight culture societies have more general social norms that are difficult for consumers to break, limiting their creativity. Loose culture provides more freedom for consumers to be creative.

The relationship between multicultural experiences and cognitive complexity is also influenced by loose-tight culture. According to loose-tight culture theory, social norms provide individuals with information processing advantages and decision-making shortcuts in a given situation, and individuals exhibit behaviors that conform to group expectations by effectively perceiving the social norms of the group they are in and realizing what behavior is more in line with group expectations, i.e., how the majority of individuals in the group do or should act, to bring the behavior into line with the group’s expectations (Gelfand & Jackson, 2016). Thus, in tight culture scenarios, individuals propose ideas or opinions that are more in line with the expectations of their group and are less creative; in loose culture scenarios, individuals are less bound by social norms, which helps to propose creative ideas. At the same time, consumers in tight culture are able to perceive that their behavior is under strict scrutiny and able to anticipate severe punishment for deviations from social norms, so individuals living in tight culture scenarios for long periods of time have a higher sense of responsibility (Frink & Klimoski, 1998); that is, consumers believe that they must obey and comply with normative expectations to avoid punishment or negative outcomes. As an adaptation to this high level of responsibility, individuals in tight culture scenarios have greater self-monitoring, greater caution, greater behavioral self-regulation, higher structural demands, greater prevention focus, greater responsibility, and lower openness (Gelfand et al., 2011). Consumers "purge" multicultural experiences of cognitive content that are incompatible with their social norms and exclude it from their self-cognitive structure; therefore, tight cultural scenarios diminish the positive effects of multicultural experiences on cognitive complexity. In contrast, consumers living in long-term loose culture scenarios, who perceive lower levels of social norms and a lower threat of punishment for deviating from social norms, have a stronger willingness to incorporate cognitive content that is incompatible with social norms into their self-cognitive structure and loose culture enhances the positive effect of multicultural experiences on cognitive complexity.

Thus, consumers increase their level of cognitive complexity while acquiring new cognitive content from multicultural experiences, and consumers with high general cognitive complexity may be able to organize and understand relevant product information more easily and quickly, retrieve seemingly different ideas or concepts from each culture, and integrate these ideas in novel ways to create new ideas. Based on this, this paper proposes the following hypothesis.

  • H3: The positive relationship between multicultural experiences and (a) consumer creativity, and (b) cognitive complexity is moderated by loose-tight culture, and this relationship is stronger when the culture is looser.

Study 1

Study 1 aims to examine the mechanisms and boundary conditions of the impact of multicultural experiences on consumer creativity, i.e., do multicultural experiences have a direct impact on consumer creativity? Does cognitive complexity play a mediating role in the relationship between multicultural experiences and consumer creativity? Is there a moderating effect of loose-tight cultural perception on the relationship between multicultural experiences and consumer creativity? Does the interaction of multicultural experiences and loose-tight culture have an impact on cognitive complexity and then influence consumer creativity? For the answers to the above research questions, Study 1 used a questionnaire to collect data on each variable.

Measurements

Study 1 had the independent variable multicultural experiences, the dependent variable consumer creativity, the mediating variable cognitive complexity, and the moderating variable loose-tight culture. Study 1 used a questionnaire to validly measure the above variables, and the measurement scales for each variable are described in detail below.

Multicultural experiences are experiences in which individuals come into contact or interact with elements or members of a foreign culture. Study 1 used the Multicultural Experiences Scale by Aytug et al. (2018), which defines it as an individual-level construct. The scale contains 10 items, all of which are rated on a seven-point scale from 1–7, with higher scores indicating more multicultural experiences for the individual. This paper uses the Cognitive Complexity Scale developed by Jadelyn K. Martinez et al. (2020) for the measurement of cognitive complexity, which has a better applicability for the measurement of cognitive complexity. The scale contains 12 items, all of which are rated on a seven-point scale from 1–7, with higher scores indicating higher cognitive complexity of the individual. For the measurement of loose-tight cultural constructs, this paper focuses on the cultural tightness scale developed by Gelfand et al., (2011). The general applicability of the scale was confirmed in Chua et al.'s (2019) study of cultural tightness across Chinese provinces. The scale has 6 items, all of which are rated on a seven-point scale from 1–7, with higher scores indicating the tighter the cultural environment in which the individual lives. Consumer creativity was mainly measured by referring to the scales of Burroughs and Glen Mick (2004). The scale consists of 5 seven-point items on a scale of 1–7, with higher scores indicating higher levels of individual creativity. The measurement scales can be found in the appendix.

Reliability and validity tests

Individuals can be exposed to different cultures in a variety of ways, such as observing people from different cultures, trying different cuisines, watching foreign movies or videos, listening to people speak different languages, or seeing foreign architecture. This contact does not involve any communication or interaction with people from different cultures (Leung & Chiu, 2010). “University culture” is as important as “corporate culture”, “sports culture” and other " daily culture" in cross-cultural issues (Endicott et al., 2003). Past research has shown that college students tend to parallel American and Chinese cultures in their minds when presented with elements of a fusion of Chinese and American cultures (Chiu & Kwan, 2010). Therefore, it is more representative due to the wide exposure and acceptance of multiculturalism by college students. The formal questionnaires of Study 1 were mainly distributed to undergraduate and graduate students, 252 questionnaires were distributed. According to the reverse scoring question set (Gelfand et al., 2011), i.e., the same question was asked in both positive and negative directions, and the questions were reverse scored in the statistical process. When the subjects' responses were contradictory, the questionnaire was considered invalid. Finally, 51 invalid questionnaires were excluded, and a total of 201 valid questionnaires (average age 29.95 years, including 98 females and 103 males).

Study 1 used SPSS 26 to analyze the reliability of the constructs measured in the study and mainly obtained two indicators, Cronbach's α and combined reliability. The Cronbach's α coefficients of each measurement construct were greater than 0.8, and the combined reliability of each construct ranged from 0.859 to 0.925, indicating that the measurement questions had good internal consistency.

The structural validity included convergent validity and discriminant validity, and the confirmatory factor analysis was conducted with AMOS 26.0 for each measured item. The standardized factor loadings for each item ranged from 0.557–0.909 (p < 0.001) and reached the significance level. The average variance extracted values for all potential variables were in the range of 0.538–0.752, indicating good convergent validity for each construct, the square root value of average variance extracted for each construct was greater than the correlation coefficient with other constructs, and the differential validity passed the test, as shown in Table 1 below.

The samples were tested using AMOS 26.0 to verify that the four-factor model fits optimally (Hu & Bentler, 1998; Williams et al., 2010). χ2/df, GFI, CFI, IFI, TLI and RMSEA were selected as evaluation indexes. χ2/df is better the closer to 1, χ2/df < 3 indicates a good model fit; GFI, CFI, IFI and TLI > 0.90, RMSEA is close to 0, indicating the model fits well. Table 2 shows that the four-factor structural model has the best fit.

Test for common method bias

Common method bias is examined on the basis of procedural controls for possible common method bias (e.g., anonymous completion, reverse scoring of some items). First, the confirmatory factor analysis model M1 is constructed, and second, the model M2 containing the methodological factors is constructed. Comparing the main fit indexes of model M1 and model M2, we get: △GFI = 0.013, △IFI = 0.009, △NFI = 0.017, △RMSEA = 0.004. The change in each fit index was less than 0.02, indicating that the model was not significantly improved by the addition of the common method factor, and there was no significant common method bias in the measurements (Zongkui, 2018).

The relationship between multicultural experiences and consumer creativity: A model test with mediated moderating effects

Study 1 drew on the Bootstrap approach proposed by Preacher and Hayes to test the mediating effect of cognitive complexity (Zhao et al., 2010). Model4 of PROCESS (Model4 is a simple mediation model) was chosen with a sample size of 5000 and a confidence interval of 95%. The mediating effects of cognitive complexity in the relationship between multicultural experiences and consumer creativity were examined controlling for gender, age, and education, and the results are presented in Table 3 and 4. The predictive effect of multicultural experiences on consumer creativity was significant (β = 0.332, t(199) = 6.048, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.644) and remained significant when mediating variables were added (β = 0.147, t(199) = 2.426, p = 0.016, η2 = 0.680), supporting H1. The positive predictive effect of multicultural experiences on cognitive complexity was significant (β = 0.313, t(199) = 5.421, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.434), as was the positive predictive effect of cognitive complexity on consumer creativity (β = 0.549, t(199) = 13.081, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.608), supporting H2. Furthermore, bootstrap 95% confidence intervals for both the direct effect of multicultural experiences on consumer creativity and the mediating effect of cognitive complexity do not contain 0 (see Table 4), indicating that multicultural experiences not only predicts consumer creativity directly but also through the mediating effect of cognitive complexity. This direct effect (0.247) and mediating effect (0.173) accounted for 58.810% and 41.190% of the total effect (0.420), respectively.

Drawing on the Bootstrap method proposed by Preacher and Hayes to test again the mediation effect of cognitive complexity (Zhao, et al., 2010), Model 8 of PROCESS was chosen (Model 8 assumes that the first half of the mediation model and the direct path are moderated, which is consistent with the theoretical model of this study), and the sample size was chosen at 5000, with a confidence interval of 95%. The results (see Table 5) show that the interaction term between multicultural experiences and loose-tight culture has a significant predictive effect on both consumer creativity and cognitive complexity after putting loose-tight culture into the model (consumer creativity: β = -0.126, t(199) = -2.627, p = 0.046, η2 = 0.684; cognitive complexity: β = -0.286, t (199) =—7.740, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.795), suggesting that loose-tight culture can play a moderating role not only in the direct prediction of multicultural experiences on consumer creativity, but also in the prediction of multicultural experiences on cognitive complexity. Moreover, as shown in Table 6, the mediating effect of loose-tight culture in the relationship between multicultural experiences and consumer creativity also tends to decrease, i.e., as cultural tightness increases, multicultural experiences are less likely to promote consumer creativity through cognitive complexity, supporting H3.

A simple moderating effect test was conducted with multicultural experiences as the independent variable, consumer creativity as the dependent variable, and loose-tight culture as the moderating variable, and the results are shown in Fig. 2. Specifically, in the loose culture scenario, consumer creativity was significantly higher in the high multicultural experiences group than in the low multicultural experiences group (Mhigh multicultural experiences = 4.973, SD = 1.591 vs M low multicultural experiences = 2.739, SD = 1.116, F(1,111) = 53.915, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.327). In the tight culture scenario, consumer creativity in the high multicultural experiences group was marginally significantly higher than that in the low multicultural experiences group (M high multicultural experiences = 3.480, SD = 1.378 vs M low multicultural experiences = 2.870, SD = 1.258, F(1,86) = 2.069, p = 0.094, η2 = 0.023).

Fig. 2
figure 2

The Moderating Role of Loose-tight Culture in the Relationship between Multicultural Experiences and Consumer Creativity

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In addition, a simple moderating effect test was conducted with multicultural experiences as the independent variable, cognitive complexity as the dependent variable, and loose-tight culture as the moderating variable, and the results are shown in Fig. 3. Specifically, in the loose culture scenario, cognitive complexity was significantly higher in the high multicultural experiences group than in the low multicultural experiences group (Mhigh multicultural experiences = 4.778, SD = 0.761 vs M low multicultural experiences = 2.962, SD = 0.971, F(1,111) = 112.486, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.5037). In the tight culture scenario, cognitive complexity in the high multicultural experiences group was marginally significantly higher than that in the low multicultural experiences group (M high multicultural experiences = 2.872, SD = 0.968 vs M low multicultural experiences = 2.574, SD = 0.646, F(1,86) = 2.601, p = 0.091, η2 = 0.029).

Fig. 3
figure 3

The Moderating Role of Loose-tight Culture in the Relationship between Multicultural Experiences and Cognitive Complexity

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Discussion

First, Study 1 found that consumer multicultural experiences positively influence consumer creativity. This suggests that the effects of multicultural experiences on individuals persist until the completion of subsequent creative tasks. The results of this study further emphasize the impact of multicultural experiences. Exposure to different normative perspectives in groups or work teams with members from different cultural backgrounds has been found to be positively associated with the development of creative potential, possibly because multicultural teams are able to access heterogeneous knowledge resources from members of different cultural backgrounds to meet task demands and increase creative potential (Guimerà et al., 2005). Further, bilingual individuals tend to exhibit higher levels of creativity than monolingual individuals (LINA et al., 2011), which may be because individuals who have continuous new cognitive input in a bilingual cultural environment experience enhanced creativity performance.

Second, Study 1 found that cognitive complexity mediates the relationship between multicultural experiences and consumer creativity. Previous research has also confirmed that cognitive complexity affects perceptions and individual decision making and that individuals with high cognitive complexity seek comprehensive information, evaluate all possible outcomes, and develop multiple alternatives in the decision-making process (Wofford, 1994). At the same time, individuals with high cognitive complexity are able to think in multiple dimensions and form accurate perceptions (Carraher & Buckley, 1996). The results of this study complement previous research, which has shown that consumers do not learn effectively from products and services through consumer experiences alone because, on the one hand, consumers do not pay more attention to their real experiences and process them in depth; on the other hand, most consumer experiences are low-involvement and ambiguous, and consumers cannot process such experiences effectively, which ultimately leads to consumers' failure to learn. This part of the study based on the questionnaire found that consumers can learn effectively from long-term multicultural experiences, which are different from the general sense of consumer experiences, as multicultural experiences are significantly different and highly involved, and can prompt individuals to deepen the processing of their experienced differences. This influence mechanism involves long-term multicultural experiences that increase cognitive complexity, thus enhancing consumer creativity, which is also the result of learning based on experience.

Finally, loose-tight culture moderates the relationship between multicultural experiences, cognitive complexity and consumer creativity. Previous research has explored the influence of culture on consumer creativity more along the dimension of cultural values, e.g., studies have found that cultures that emphasize collectivist values and values that have high uncertainty avoidance and high power distance may limit individuals from expressing their unique ideas and deviating from norms (Hofstede, 1984; Westwood & Low, 2003). In contrast, a culture that emphasizes individualism, low power distance and low uncertainty avoidance creates a cultural environment that supports the expression of one's unique ideas and the exploration of new ways of doing things (Brewer & Chen, 2007; Brewer & Gardner, 1996; Kim & Markus, 1999). It has also been found that in Western or individualistic cultures, more emphasis is placed on innovative processing patterns that are more conducive to generating innovative solutions, while in collectivistic cultures, more emphasis is placed on appropriate or useful processing patterns that are conducive to generating useful solutions, thus illustrating the differences in creativity across cultural groups (Erez & Nouri, 2010). The results of this study add to the research on the relationship between culture and consumer creativity, and this study finds that loose-tight culture can also influence consumer creativity based on the social norms dimension. At the same time, most previous studies have addressed the impact of loose-tight culture on creativity at the national and regional levels, but in this paper, we look at the individual level, where individual perceptions of loose-tight culture also have an impact on creativity.

Study 2

The research hypothesis was supported in Study 1 through a questionnaire that examined the relationship between consumers' previous level of multicultural experiences and consumer creativity and supported the mediated moderating model. This section examines the effect of multicultural experiences on consumer creativity and tests the mediated moderating model, i.e., the experimental method was used to manipulate multicultural experiences and loose-tight culture to test the above research hypothesis.

Pre-test

To ensure independence of multicultural experiences and loose-tight cultural manipulations, the experiment was conducted with two independent pretests (Wen Wan et al., 2017). Consistent with the use of materials in the formal experiment, the loose-tight culture was first manipulated and a scale test of multicultural experiences was completed. 95 subjects were recruited from online for this experiment (mean age 31.25 years, 61 females and 34 males) and they were randomly assigned to a loose culture scenario (48) and a tight culture scenario (47). We took the mean of the 2 question items of the Multicultural Experiences Scale for ANOVA (α = 0.828) and the results showed no significant effect (M loose culture = 5.115, SD = 1.426 vs M tight culture = 5.064, SD = 1.531, F(1,93) = 0.167, P = 0.627, η2 < 0.001).

The multicultural experiences were manipulated and measures of loose-tight cultural variables were completed. 88 subjects (mean age 33.15 years, 53 females and 35 males) recruited from online were randomly assigned to multicultural situations (45) and monocultural situations (43). We took the means of the 6 question items of the Loose-Tight Culture Scale for ANOVA (α = 0.829) and the results showed no significant effect (M monocultural = 5.368, SD = 0.815 vs M multicultural = 5.296, SD = 1.089, F(1,86) = 0.122, P = 0.728, η2 = 0.001). Thus, the manipulation of multicultural experiences is independent of the manipulation of loose-tight culture.

Experimental design and measurements

Study 2 recruited 262 subjects from online to complete a 2 (multicultural experiences: multicultural vs. monocultural) × 2 (cultural tightness: loose-culture vs. tight-culture) between-subjects design on an online platform (mean age 29.15 years, 143 females and 119 males). To examine the effect and adequacy of sample size, we used G-Power at α = 0.05, Power = 0.80, and Effect Size = 0.25 to obtain 179 as the minimum sample size for the experimental design. Thus, 262 samples were sufficient to provide accuracy for this study. The subjects were randomly assigned to the loose-culture and tight-culture groups, with 135 subjects assigned to the loose-culture group and another 127 subjects assigned to the tight-culture group. During the experiment, subjects in each situation were randomly manipulated for multicultural experiences; in the loose-culture group, 67 multicultural manipulated subjects and 68 monocultural manipulated subjects; in the tight-culture group, 65 multicultural manipulated subjects and 62 monocultural manipulated subjects.

It has been shown that individuals can be exposed to different cultures through short-term understanding, such as observing people from different cultures, trying different cuisines, watching foreign movies or videos, listening to people speak different languages, or seeing foreign architecture, and that this exposure does not involve any communication or interaction with people from different cultures (Endicott et al., 2003). The multicultural experiences level was manipulated through picture and text learning (Leung & Chiu, 2010), with the multicultural group presenting a combination of pictures and narration of Chinese and American cultures, and the monocultural group presenting pictures and narration of a single Chinese culture, with pictures presented across multiple domains. Subjects rated their level of multicultural experiences on a 7-point Likert scale after completing the picture-text study ("I think culture is multicultural", "I can clearly feel the differences in multiculturalism", 1 = completely disagree, 7 = completely agree, α = 0.950) (Leung & Chiu, 2010).

The loose-tight culture manipulation is examined next. This paper draws on the methodology used by Jackson et al. (2021) to conduct the manipulation. At the beginning of the experiment, the subjects were asked to read short texts about Tekki, a future society founded 500 years later, which has many social norms in the tight culture and few social norms in the loose culture. This approach allowed us to temporarily change participants' perceptions of social norms (Jackson et al., 2021). The loose-tight culture was measured using a scale developed by Gelfand et al., (2011), consisting of six items, with higher scores indicating a tighter culture (e.g. "In Tekki, people are expected to follow many social norms", "In Tekki, if someone behaves inappropriately, others will strongly disagree", "In Tekki, people almost always follow social norms", "In Tekki, there are very clear expectations about how people should behave in most situations", "In most situations in Tekki, people agree on what behavior is appropriate and what behavior is inappropriate ", "People in Tekki have a lot of freedom to decide how they want to behave in most situations", 1 = completely disagree, 7 = completely agree, α = 0.896).

After completing the above manipulation, subjects were asked to complete the Cognitive Complexity Scale, which was based on Zinkhan and Braunsberger's (2004) measure and consisted of 12 items (e.g., "A problem has little attraction for me if I don’t think it has a solution," "I am hesitant about making important decisions after thinking about them," 1 = completely disagree, 7 = completely agree, α = 0.898).

To assess the relative long-term effects of the multicultural experiences manipulation on creativity performance, all participants were asked to continue completing a creativity task after 3 days (Leung & Chiu, 2010). To control for the influence of subjects' prior experience on creativity, we used a creative task that did not require any multicultural knowledge: the unusual newspaper use task (Guilford, 1967). This was a divergent thinking task to measure the creative performance of the participants. After the questionnaires were returned, five master's students from the business school were sought to assess the innovativeness, originality and usefulness of each idea on a seven-point Likert scale, with a separate item for each dimension (e.g., 1 = "extremely uninnovative", 7 = "extremely innovative", α innovativeness = 0.847, α originality = 0.838, α usefulness = 0.902) (Hofstetter et al., 2021). From these scores, we calculated the creative performance score. The manipulation material has been placed in Appendix Tables 14, 15 and 16.

Analysis of results

Manipulation check

The study took the means of the question items of the loose-tight culture manipulation test for ANOVA and found that subjects in the tight culture condition rated their perceptions of social norms and order significantly higher than those in the loose culture condition (M loose culture = 3.130, SD = 1.110 vs M tight culture = 5.293, SD = 0.655; F(1,260) = 362.990, P < 0.001, η2 = 0.583), indicating that the study was successful in manipulating the loose-tight culture.

In addition, the study was successful in manipulating multicultural experiences (M monocultural = 4.117, SD = 1.232 vs M multicultural = 5.012, SD = 0.717; F(1,260) = 30.023, P < 0.001, η2 = 0.102), with significant differences in subjects' perceptions of multicultural experiences.

Reliability and validity tests

Study 2 used spss26 to analyze the reliability of the constructs measured in the study, and mainly obtained two indicators, Cronbach's α and combined reliability. The Cronbach's α coefficients of each measurement construct were all greater than 0.8, and the combined reliability of each construct ranged from 0.838 to 0.950, indicating good internal consistency of each measurement question.

Structural validity included convergent and discriminant validity, and confirmatory factor analysis was conducted with AMOS 26.0 for each measure item, and the standardized factor loadings for each item ranged from 0.603 to 0.898 (p < 0.001) and reached significance levels. The average variance extracted values of all potential variables were between 0.655 and 0.852, indicating that the measures of each construct had good convergent validity, and the square root value of average variance extracted for each construct was greater than the correlation coefficient with other constructs, and the differential validity passed the test, as shown in Table 7 below.

Study 2 again used AMOS 26.0 to verify whether the four-factor model fits optimally (Hu & Bentler, 1998; Williams et al., 2010). χ2/df, GFI, CFI, IFI, TLI and RMSEA were selected as evaluation indicators. Table 8 shows that the four-factor structural model has the best fit.

Test for common method bias

The common method bias was tested using the same method as in Study 1 (Change et al., 2010). First, the confirmatory factor analysis model M1 is constructed, and second, the model M2 containing the methodological factors is constructed. Comparing the main fit indexes of model M1 and model M2, we get: △GFI = 0.022, △IFI = 0.011, △NFI = 0.011, △RMSEA = 0.006. The change in each fit index was less than 0.03, indicating that the model was not significantly improved by the addition of the common method factor, and there was no significant common method bias in the measurements (Zongkui, 2018).

Hypothesis test

Study 2 again chose Model 4 of PROCESS with a sample size chosen at 5000 and a confidence interval of 95%. The mediating effect of cognitive complexity in the relationship between multicultural experiences and consumer creativity was examined controlling for gender, age, and education, and the results are presented in Table 10 and 11. The predictive effect of multicultural experiences on consumer creativity was significant (β = 0.826, t(260) = 24.322, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.755) and remained significant when mediating variables were added (β = 0.653, t(260) = 17.728, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.649), supporting H1. The positive predictive effect of multicultural experiences on cognitive complexity was significant (β = 0.686, t(260) = 15.045, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.541), as was the positive predictive effect of cognitive complexity on consumer creativity (β = 0.273, t(260) = 9.612, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.460), supporting H2. Furthermore, bootstrap 95% confidence intervals for both the direct effect of multicultural experiences on consumer creativity and the mediating effect of cognitive complexity do not contain 0 (see Table 11), indicating that multicultural experiences not only predicts consumer creativity directly but also through the mediating effect of cognitive complexity. This direct effect (0.653) and mediating effect (0.173) accounted for 79.056% and 20.944% of the total effect (0.826), respectively.

Model 8 of PROCESS was selected again, and the sample size was chosen at 5000 with a confidence interval of 95%. The results (see Table 11) show that the interaction term between multicultural experiences and loose-tight culture has a significant predictive effect on both consumer creativity and cognitive complexity after putting loose-tight culture into the model (consumer creativity: β = -0.097, t(260) = -3.277, p = 0.008, η2 = 0.653; cognitive complexity: β = -0.135, t (260) = -3.277, p = 0.024, η2 = 0.531), suggesting that loose-tight culture can play a moderating role not only in the direct prediction of multicultural experiences on consumer creativity, but also in the prediction of multicultural experiences on cognitive complexity. Moreover, as shown in Table 12, the mediating effect of loose-tight culture in the relationship between multicultural experiences and consumer creativity also tends to decrease, i.e., as cultural tightness increases, multicultural experiences are less likely to promote consumer creativity through cognitive complexity, supporting H3.

A simple moderating effect test was conducted with multicultural experiences as the independent variable, consumer creativity as the dependent variable, and loose-tight culture as the moderating variable, and the results are shown in Fig. 4. Specifically, in the loose culture scenario, consumer creativity was significantly higher in the high multicultural experiences group than in the low multicultural experiences group (M high multicultural experiences = 5.250, SD = 0.975 vs M low multicultural experiences = 2.637, SD = 1.064, F(1,133) = 222.703, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.626). In the tight culture scenario, consumer creativity in the high multicultural experiences group was significantly higher than that in the low multicultural experiences group (M high multicultural experiences = 4.631, SD = 1.258 vs M low multicultural experiences = 2.409, SD = 0.880, F(1,125) = 134.924, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.519).

Fig. 4
figure 4

The Moderating Role of Loose-tight Culture in the Relationship between Multicultural Experiences and Consumer Creativity

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In addition, a simple moderating effect test was conducted with multicultural experiences as the independent variable, cognitive complexity as the dependent variable, and loose-tight culture as the moderating variable, and the results are shown in Fig. 5. Specifically, in the loose culture scenario, cognitive complexity was significantly higher in the high multicultural experiences group than in the low multicultural experiences group (M high multicultural experiences = 5.846, SD = 0.863 vs M low multicultural experiences = 4.190, SD = 1.188, F(1,133) = 84.482, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.388). In the tight culture scenario, cognitive complexity in the high multicultural experiences group was marginally significantly higher than that in the low multicultural experiences group (M high multicultural experiences = 5.008, SD = 1.201 vs M low multicultural experiences = 4.054, SD = 0.959, F(1,125) = 24.573, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.164).

Fig. 5
figure 5

The Moderating Role of Loose-tight Culture in the Relationship between Multicultural Experiences and Cognitive Complexity

Full size image

Discussion

First, this study found that consumer creativity can be stimulated by providing input from different cultural experiences. The results of this study are inconsistent with the existing literature on the effects of resource scarcity on consumer creativity; previous research has shown a negative relationship between resource abundance and innovativeness, with individuals with fewer resources tending to be more exploratory in creative tasks (Ravi & Meng, 2016). In contrast, consumers in the multicultural experiences scenario in this experimental study were more creative, and the difference in the results of this study can be explained in two ways. On the one hand, the multicultural experiences provided to the subjects in this experiment were "contradictory information" about the same thing, and the multicultural experiences appeared to be resourceful, but in fact it was an input constraint or resource constraint, which has been confirmed to have a positive effect on exploratory behavior and novelty of creative output (Moreau & Dahl, 2005), so the multicultural experiences that appear to be resourceful can have a positive effect on consumer creativity in this study. Second, there is a "qualitative" difference in the multicultural experiences resources offered to consumers in this study, whereas previous studies focused on the quantitative difference in resources, even though the richness of the resources offered is not separated from the broader category to which they belong. Therefore, the results of this study enrich the research on consumer creativity in terms of input constraints and resource scarcity and can also provide more references for companies to stimulate consumer creativity based on the resource input of multicultural experiences.

Second, cognitive complexity plays a mediating role in the relationship between multicultural experiences and consumer creativity. In this experiment, multicultural experiences introduced inconsistent concepts that triggered individuals to explore their interrelationships, and the process of resolving inconsistent concepts may make individuals with multicultural experiences more cognitively complex than those who had been exposed to only one culture, and the complex cognitive structure contributed to better creative performance in subsequent creative tasks. The results of this study enrich the research on cognitive complexity, as the existing literature on the relationship between cognitive complexity and herding effects found that individuals with high cognitive complexity prefer to carefully evaluate all perspectives in decision making; therefore, individuals with high cognitive complexity prefer to use their own assessments in the decision-making process rather than blindly following others (Rejikumar et al., 2021). Thus, consumers with high cognitive complexity are more likely to develop creative ideas independent of others' ideas in a creativity task.

Finally, the study found that loose-tight culture moderates the relationship between multicultural experiences and cognitive complexity as well as consumer creativity. The results of this study add to the findings of the existing literature, which found that high empowerment increases the novelty of consumer creativity, consumer involvement in the product innovation process, and deeper consumer involvement in the product development process. Because consumer creativity for products is not limited by fixed mindsets and expertise, their creative ideas can help internal designers enhance product novelty (Füller & Matzler, 2007). The research in this paper also found that setting appropriate standards or norms for creative tasks can limit consumer creativity, and both previous research and this study verified that providing consumers with a certain amount of freedom to engage in creative activities can better stimulate consumer creativity. At the same time, previous research has found that feedback from other community members about the initial self-design leads to less uniqueness in the final self-design and less satisfaction with the self-designed product (Hildebrand et al., 2013). The results of this study to some extent corroborate the findings of this paper that social feedback or expectations have the potential to reduce consumer creativity.

Conclusion and prospect

Conclusion

  1. (1)

    Consumer multicultural experiences positively influence consumer creativity. This paper examines the effect of individuals' previous multicultural experiences on consumer creativity in the long term; Empirical Study 2 manipulated multicultural experiences in the short term and showed that consumers were more creative in the multicultural experiences condition compared to the monocultural experiences experimental condition. The two empirical studies come to the relatively consistent conclusion that both long-term multicultural experiences and short-term multicultural manipulations can have a significant enhancing effect on consumer creativity. During multicultural experiences, consumers are able to receive information that is different from their own culture conveyed by the relevant experiences and are prompted to transform various cultural observations into new perspectives; multicultural experiences can provide consumers with pathways to receive new information, and consumers creatively incorporate new cultural elements and apply them to creative tasks, thus enhancing their creative performance.

  2. (2)

    Loose-tight culture plays a moderating role in the relationship between multicultural experiences, cognitive complexity and consumer creativity. Any creative idea generation is a socially constructed process in the domain where creative work occurs and is influenced by the social environment, and loose-tight culture, as measured by the prevalence of social norms and tolerance for deviations from them, is an important aspect of the social environment. Consumers' tendency to collect, process, and evaluate information when completing creative tasks is closely tied to a loose-tight social culture with more general social norms and severe penalties for deviations from social norms and consumers' tendency to obtain culturally appropriate perspectives or ideas from multicultural experiences, which hinders cognitive complexity and inhibits their creative performance. With fewer social norms and more tolerance for deviations from social norms, consumers are able to ignore the constraints of the dominant paradigm, challenge established norms and rules, break the limits of metacultural stereotypes, become more complex in their self-perceptions, and integrate foreign cultural elements and creative expansion into creative tasks to enhance their creative performance.

  3. (3)

    Cognitive complexity plays a mediating role. Cognitive complexity is an important structure for consumer understanding and perception, and this paper finds that multicultural experiences and the interaction of multicultural experiences and loose-tight culture influence consumer creativity through cognitive complexity, which plays a mediating role. First, consumers need to effectively understand the newly exposed cultural knowledge in the process of multicultural experiences, thus improving consumers' cognitive needs. Second, multicultural experiences can enable consumers to have a deeper understanding of other cultures and improve their openness to the experience. Third, multicultural experiences convey cultural information different from consumers' own, thus making consumers focus on their inner feelings and reflect on themselves frequently. High cognitive demand, openness to experience, a tendency to focus on self-knowledge, and frequent reflection increase consumers' cognitive complexity. More complex cognitive structures help consumers organize the cognitive content acquired in the context of multicultural experiences effectively, understand relevant product information more efficiently, retrieve seemingly different ideas or concepts from each culture, and integrate these ideas in novel ways to create new ideas and improve consumers' creative performance.

Theoretical contributions

First, this paper provides a new perspective for understanding the impact of multiculturalism on consumer creativity from different dimensions of culture. Although many studies provide evidence that multicultural experiences enhance individual creativity, there is still the possibility that multicultural experiences limit individual creativity (Chua & Jin, 2020; Maddux et al., 2020), and multicultural experiences do not enhance creativity under all conditions (Chen et al., 2016; Maddux et al., 2020). This paper discusses the issue of the influence of culture on consumer creativity from the dual perspective of multiculturalism and loose-tight culture, adding the dimension of loose-tight culture to the study of multiculturalism, discussing the potential influence of both on consumer creativity, and thus providing a new perspective for understanding consumer creativity in the context of globalization.

Second, it expands the dimensions of research on the relationship between culture and consumer creativity. Previous studies have focused more on the influence of different aspects of cultural values on creativity, e.g., the impact of intensity individualism-collectivism, risk avoidance on creative thinking styles (Erez & Nouri, 2010). However, the influence of loose-tight culture on creativity based on cultural norms has been less addressed, while loose-tight culture is a new framework for consumer behavior research, loose-tight culture can better explain relevant issues in the consumer domain. For example, it has been found that individuals from tight culture are less likely to engage in or succeed in foreign creative tasks, and this effect increases with the cultural distance between countries. The results of this paper indicate that a loose-tight culture based on social norms moderates the relationship between multicultural experiences, cognitive complexity and consumer creativity and that loose cultural scenarios enhance the positive effects of multicultural experiences on cognitive complexity and consumer creativity, suggesting that the construction of creative ideas by consumers in specific cultural situations is moderated by loose-tight cultural scenarios. This paper examines the influence of a loose-tight culture based on social norms on consumer creativity, extending cross-cultural research from a focus on the values dimension to the social norms dimension.

Third, by applying cognitive complexity to explain the mechanisms of multicultural influence on consumer creativity, theoretical evidence is provided at the consumer level for understanding creativity as a cognitive process (Burroughs et al., 2008; Ritter et al., 2012). It has been shown that cognitive complexity is an important influence on how consumers use various information processing styles and strategies and that cognitive complexity has been shown to be associated with a more refined evaluation structure of individuals, which can have an impact on brand loyalty and attitude formation (Zinkhan & Braunsberger, 2004). This paper argues that multicultural experiences are an important source of cognitive content acquisition for consumers, and cognitive complexity is an important cognitive structure for consumers to make sense of the cognitive content acquired through multicultural experiences. This paper combines the two to elucidate the mechanism of the influence of multicultural experiences on consumers' creativity. The findings suggest that cognitive complexity as a cognitive structure mediates the relationship between multicultural experiences and consumer creativity and that the interaction between multicultural experiences and loose-tight culture influences consumer creativity through cognitive complexity, evidence that further enriches the theoretical understanding of creativity as a cognitive process.

Management insights

This paper has practical significance in three areas.

First, this paper explores how the creative input of multicultural experiences can enhance consumer creativity and offers implications for companies to stimulate and capture consumer creativity. Consumers are increasingly being given the opportunity to customize their products and experiences and are actively seeking to customize their services and experiences, a trend that makes the ability to come up with creative solutions to their own needs an important antecedent to consumer satisfaction. This paper finds that by providing consumers with creative input based on different cultural experiences can effectively stimulate consumers' creativity, so companies should provide multicultural elements in their customized services to provide consumers with choices, thus stimulating consumers' creativity. The results of the study also have implications for the acquisition of consumer ideas by enterprises, which should innovate the way of acquiring consumer ideas, such as establishing virtual brand communities, allowing different consumers to speak freely, benefiting from the dialog between consumers, acquiring multicultural experiences, and then continuously improving creative ideas.

Second, this paper finds that cognitive complexity plays a mediating role in the relationship between multicultural experiences and consumer creativity and that firms can stimulate consumer creativity by increasing their cognitive complexity in consumer idea acquisition. Studies have shown that the more information an individual processes, the more complex the cognition will be. Therefore, when obtaining consumers' ideas, companies can provide consumers with richer product information and even compare their products with those of competitors so that consumers can have a more comprehensive cognition of the products and not stick to a certain angle and then develop more creative ideas.

Third, this paper examines the moderating effect of a loose-tight culture. This paper finds that a more relaxed cultural atmosphere is conducive to stimulating consumers' creativity, so companies should strive to create a free and open atmosphere in the process of stimulating and acquiring consumers' creativity. They should allow consumers to dare to express different opinions, fully respecting consumers' creativity, not negatively evaluating consumers' creativity, and stimulating consumers to actively share resources and information to achieve a virtuous cycle of ever higher-quality creativity.

Research limitations and perspectives

First, this paper considers multicultural experiences as a way for consumers to access other cultural cognitive content, but in real life, consumers have diverse ways to access multicultural experiences, such as social media, multicultural interpersonal networks, and multicultural education. In the future, other ways for consumers to access multicultural experiences can still be further explored, e.g., Roy Y. J. Chua and other scholars found that social network diversity provides access to specific forms of knowledge and has a domain-specific impact on creativity (Chua, 2018).

Second, this paper examines the moderating effect of loose-tight culture on consumer creativity in terms of the social environment in which consumers live. The measurement of consumer creativity is based on a combination of two aspects, novelty and applicability of ideas, and future research can divide consumer creativity into these two aspects, novelty and applicability, and examine separately what impact loose-tight culture has on each of the two aspects of consumer creativity. Existing research has found that internal and external motivations (Hennessey, 2010) have different effects on the novelty and applicability of ideas and that loose-tight culture may also have different effects on both the novelty and applicability aspects of consumer creativity.

Finally, this paper examines the impact of loose-tight culture on multicultural experiences on consumer creativity from a "quantitative" perspective of social norms, while future research could examine the moderating effect of different types of social norms from a qualitative perspective. It has been found that individuals differ in their processing patterns of descriptive and imperative social norm information from a qualitative perspective: for descriptive social norm information, individuals use heuristic information processing patterns, while for imperative social norm information, individuals initiate systematic processing patterns, which in turn influence consumer behavior (Kredentser et al., 2012). Future research could examine the impact of the activation of descriptive and imperative social norms on consumer creativity from the perspective of the "quality" of social norms so that more targeted countermeasures can be suggested to companies.