Abstract:
The advent of structural equation modeling (SEM) with latent variables has changed the nature of research in international marketing and management. Researchers acknowledge the possibilities of distinguishing between measurement and structural models and explicitly taking measurement error into account. As Gefen, Straub, and Boudreau (2000, p. 6) point out, ``SEM has become de rigueur in validating instruments and testing linkages between constructs.¿¿ They furthermore distinguish between two families of SEM techniques: covariance-based techniques, as represented by LISREL, and variance-based techniques, of which partial least squares (PLS) path modeling is the most prominent representative.
