desire to not fall behind the group (Heine and Lehman 1999) and feel compelled to conform to societal expectations CULTURE & BEAUTY 14 and norms (Torrelli 2006). However, this pressure to conform should be felt more strongly when the tolerance of deviant behaviour is low (i.e., when situational norms are tight). When the situational norms are loose, interdependents may feel lesser need to conform to appearance related standards. This may result in reduced usage of appearance enhancing tools and products. Given their low motivation to adhere to norms, we expect consumers low in interdependent self-construal to be relatively unaffected by situational norms (either tight or loose). Formally, we propose: H3: Situational norms (tight vs. loose) will moderate Easterners’ (more interdependent) usage of appearance enhancing products such that they will be less (more) likely to use appearance-enhancing products when the norms are loose (tight). This would have no effect on those who are less interdependent. OVERVIEW OF STUDIES Given the ubiquity of the phenomenon, and its relevance to international marketing, we first present secondary data based evidence from the industry that shows that Eastern countries dominate the scorecard on beauty related consumption. We then test our hypotheses in three studies conducted across five countries. In Study 1, we operationalize culture both through nationality (Canada and China) and self-construal to test if, compared to Westerners (low interdependence), Easterners (high interdependence) have a greater preference for beauty products. Study 2 uncovers the underlying mechanism driving the effect by measuring interdependence within the US, hence controlling for potential alternative explanations. Finally, in Study 3 we demonstrate that when situational norms are loosened, interdependents do not feel compelled to use appearance-enhancing products. All participants were females CULTURE & BEAUTY 15 between 18-35 years of age as they are the key target group for beauty companies and the context of this research is most relevant for this demographic segment. PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE FROM INDUSTRY DATA With the dual objective of underscoring the ubiquity of the phenomenon and its importance to international marketing scholarship, we explored secondary data from the beauty industry for supporting evidence. We obtained country-level spending on beauty categories (in USD million) from the Passport Database (erstwhile Euromonitor, 2017) for full year 2016. We included beauty and personal care as defined by Euromonitor excluding baby and child specific products, fragrances, and men’s grooming. Ranking countries purely on beauty related spending is not a valid way to look at beauty related consumption as it would be unduly affected by size of economy (e.g., USA) and population (e.g., China, India). To avoid these issues, and compare apples to apples, we decided to examine spends on beauty categories as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP; World Bank 2018) for each country for the same year. Looking at the level of spending on beauty as the percentage of GDP for each country allows us to accurately capture the proclivity for beauty displayed by its population, irrespective of state of economic development or overall size of market driven by sheer size of population. Ranking countries on this basis revealed the Asian preference for beauty, with four out of Top 5 countries being in Asia. Japan (0.63%), South Korea (0.53%), Hong Kong (0.45%), and Thailand (0.40%) lead the Top 5 tally with UK (0.42%), the sole Western country, coming in at number 4. This data shows that despite any within category consumption differences that may exist between Asian and Western countries (such as skin care and make-up), Asians consistently spend more on beauty products than their Western CULTURE & BEAUTY 16 counterparts. Further, this finding also highlights the importance of cross-cultural differences in the pursuit of beauty as a pertinent research question for international marketing scholars. STUDY 1 In this study, our main objective was to test our key hypothesis (H1) by operationalizing cross-cultural differences in self-construal through nationality. We conducted this study in two countries, China and Canada, respectively. We expected that participants from China would exhibit a more positive attitude towards a beauty product as compared to those from Canada. A second aim of this study was also to provide initial evidence that individual differences in interdependence, operationalized using items from the self-construal scale, would also predict attitude towards the beauty product. Method We recruited 97 female participants from Canada (CA: Mage = 27.87 years) using Amazon Mechanical Turk and 102