Electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) plays an important role in influencing Chinese consumers’ brand perceptions. While domestic social media managers are keen to understand how to protect their brands, ...their foreign counterparts are keen to reduce consumer ethnocentrism in order to gain a foothold in the Chinese market. This study uses an online survey to investigate whether positive and negative e-WOM enhance or weaken consumer ethnocentrism and brand equity towards domestic and foreign smart phone brands. Findings suggests that both positive and negative e-WOM influence consumer ethnocentrism and that these effects are contingent upon brand origin. Furthermore, findings show that the effects of positive and negative e-WOM on brand equity are consistent, irrespective of brand origin. Interestingly, consumer ethnocentrism has a positive effect on brand equity for domestic brands, but does not have a negative effect on brand equity for foreign brands. The study further discusses theoretical and practical implications of the findings.
In this paper, we propose an integrative national identity-based model of consumer behavior. This is accomplished by integrating several important concepts (e.g., self-concept, social identity, and ...intergroup relations) as roots for consumers' feelings, attitudes, and behavioral manifestations that are linked to national identification. We examine how citizens as consumers make sense of, interpret, and respond to what their nation and their national identity mean to them, not only in routine times but also in times of crises when others threaten their national identity. This analysis increases our understanding of how consumers position themselves in relation to national symbols or national rhetoric and how this helps shape consumption behavior.
•Consumer valuation of local-regional-traditional food products is very high.•Local-regional-traditional foods are more valued than other foods.•Consumer ethnocentrism is related to the effective ...purchase of local-regional-traditional food.•The effects of consumer ethnocentrism can be direct and/or indirect.•The effects of consumer ethnocentrism vary among different product categories.
Previous literature has addressed the concepts of local products, regional products and traditional products as if they were independent concepts. However, in practice, many food products combine all three concepts. The objectives of this paper are as follows: first, to explore the valuation of food products that have local, regional and traditional features through the analysis of specific product categories; second, to study the possible link between the level of consumer ethnocentrism and the valuation and effective purchase of local-regional-traditional food.
The results show that consumers value these products highly and buy them in high proportions. In addition, levels of consumer ethnocentrism are sometimes, but not always, related to the actual purchase of these local-regional-traditional food products. This finding highlights the need to include a product’s category in analyses of the effects of consumer ethnocentrism.
The majority of previous studies examine the consumer’s valuation and intention to buy local or traditional products at a general or abstract level, which does not allow respondents to evaluate a specific food product that they can find in the market and consume. An important contribution of this work is its level of analysis: we analyze specific food product categories in two different geographic environments in Spain.
Gen-Y consumers in the Asia-Pacific region are an attractive market for Western fashion luxury. This study investigates how Gen-Y consumers’ acculturation to Western culture (AWC) tendency drives ...their intention to purchase Western fashion luxury. It further examines the moderating role of consumer ethnocentrism and materialism in the association between AWC dimensions and intention to buy Western fashion luxury items. The data collected from 692 high-income Indian Gen-Y consumers via a survey were analysed using hierarchical moderated regression and fsQCA techniques. This study contributes to fashion luxury literature. Further, the findings will be useful to fashion luxury marketers and retailers.
•The purpose of this study is to investigate how Gen-Y consumers' acculturation to Western culture drives their Western fashion luxury consumption in the Asia-Pacific region.•Hierarchical moderated regression and fsQCA were used for data analysis.•The findings showed Exposure to Western media (EWM), Social interaction with Western culture (SWC), Exposure to the marketing activities of Western multinational companies (EXW), and Openness to imitate Western culture (OWC) enhance likelihood to purchase Western fashion luxury.•Consumer ethnocentrism weakens the effects of SWC, EXW, and OWC on the likelihood to purchase, whereas materialism enhances these effects.•The study contributes social cognitive theory and acculturation theory in the context of Western fashion luxury consumption.
The present study aims to examine how consumer guilt and consumer animosity, as moderators, can impact consumers' purchase intention toward domestic products. A total of 385 responses were used to ...test the proposed relationship. PROCESS macro was used to examine the mediating and moderating relationships. The present study provides guidance to international marketers on why and how they should do extra efforts to mitigate guilt feeling. The study contributes to the growing body of literature on consumer ethnocentrism by investigating moderating role of consumer guilt and consumer animosity.
•The moderating role of consumer animosity and consumer guilt in the relationship between patriotism, ethnocentrism, and purchase intentions being studied.•The guilt feeling regulates the relationship between patriotism and purchase intention.•Consumer animosity does not moderate the relationship between patriotism and purchase intention via consumer ethnocentrism as a mediator.
Although a growing literature has investigated how animosity and consumer ethnocentrism change customers’ perceptions of foreign products in developed markets, research examining these effects in ...developing markets is scarce. Additionally, the role of country of origin on such effects has received far less attention. The current paper is developed to bridge these gaps. The primary objectives of this paper are to examine whether the animosity and consumer ethnocentrism models that work in the Western world could be applied into a developing market like Vietnam, and whether these relationships are moderated by country of origin (USA versus China). Data from 485 Vietnamese customers illustrate that most of the main effects are significant except for the relationship between ethnocentrism and product judgement, and the relationship between cosmopolitanism and willingness to buy. Furthermore, out of the three moderation effects, the influence of country of origin on the relationship between ethnocentrism and willingness to buy is significant. The paper concludes with theoretical and managerial implications, limitations, and future research.
Based on the Optimal Distinctiveness Theory, this study explores the moderating role of personal cultural values in the effect of consumer ethnocentrism on perceived product quality and purchase ...intention of foreign products in developing countries. Based on 305 Brazilian and 307 Russian nonstudent adult participants, we confirm that the effect of consumer ethnocentrism is substantially strong among the local-minded consumers but very weak or nonexistent among global-minded consumers. This research raises a need to identify the personal values of the consumer, whether local or global, to interpret the effect of consumer ethnocentrism accurately. It recommends international marketers to focus on global-minded consumers to detour the negative impact of consumer ethnocentrism when marketing to developing countries. Especially, marketing campaigns emphasizing on distinctiveness through such personal values as openness to change (self-direction and stimulation) and self-enhancement (achievement, power, and hedonism) rather than conservation (conformity, tradition, and security) and self-transcendence (universalism and benevolence).
Prior research has suggested that many consumers prefer domestic to foreign products, even when the quality is lower and the price is higher. Such bias is attributed to consumer ethnocentrism. This ...study critically examines the current conceptualizations of consumer ethnocentrism and proposes an extension of its conceptual boundaries and measurement. It determines that consumer ethnocentrism is a multidimensional construct that encompasses five dimensions: prosociality, cognition, insecurity, reflexiveness, and habituation. Empirical evidence from the United Kingdom and the United States demonstrates that the extended measurement instrument better predicts consumers' preferences for local brands at the expense of foreign brands.
Consumer services literature offers substantial evidence that ethnocentric consumers tend to prefer domestic over foreign products. Yet no research to date has delved into the question how consumer ...ethnocentrism (CE) modulates the neural processing of products. This is the first study resorting to neuroimaging to explore to what extent CE levels affect the processing of domestic (Spain) and foreign (USA and China) products. The brain data yielded by neuroimaging reveal that highly ethnocentric consumers experience a greater degree of activation in brain regions linked to self-reference and reward when considering to purchase domestic products and a greater activation in brain regions related to risk in the case of foreign products.
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