Table 5.

8
Summary of Initial Findings (CFA): Cultural Similarity
Quest. Item wording Initial Final
Items Standardised Standardised C.R.
Loadings Loadings (t)
Culs1 The styles of our
greeting/address/introductions are
.71 .66 10.68
similar to those of our major supplier
Culs3 Our legal formalities that influence
business negotiations are similar to
.74 .71 11.94
those of our major supplier
Culs4 Our standards of ethics and morals in
business are similar to that of the
.82 .85 15.15
supplier
Culs5 The uses of contracts and agreements in
our business are similar to those of our
.86 .89 16.19
major supplier’s business practice
Culs2 Our business practice (such as keeping
appointments and meeting on time) are
.77
similar to those of our major supplier
Achieved Fit Indices
CMIN/DF
RMSEA IFI TLI CFI
(χ2/df)
7.147
Initial .163 .951 .902 .951
(35.74/5)
Final .971 Md._Abu_Saleh_Thesis
.00 1.00 2006 1.00 1.00
(1.94/2)
Composite Construct Reliability .79

The plausible explanation for deleting ‘item 2’ is that it is close to the meaning and
shares the sense of ‘item 1’ with respect to similarity in business style and similarity
in business practices in terms of appointment and on time meeting. It is sensible that
those two items are redundant because keeping appointments and meeting on time
can both be considered to be elements of business style and practice. Therefore, on
exclusion of ‘item 2’, the model arrived with significant enrichment in overall fit to
the model with χ2 value reduced from 35.735 to 1.942. However, for such a measure,
Coote et al. (2003) used four different items for measuring similarity of cultural,
economic and social background in a different context. For this study, this measure
used different items from Coote et al. (2003) covering cultural similarity in terms of
style, legal formalities, standard of ethics and morals and the use of contracts and
agreements. Accordingly, deletion of one item and using four items for measuring
cultural similarity between importer and supplier would not impact on the content and
face validity of the measurement because these items are not losing any basic element

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