An Assessment of Consumer Ethnocentrism Tendencies Scale among University Students: The case of Turkish and Bosnian Students

Merjema Becic

doi:10.21533/isjss.v2i1.57

Abstract

The process of globalization and liberalization of markets brought new challenges and opportunities for both, local and global businesses. A number of studies explored consumer ethnocentric tendencies by making use of CETSCALE, universally accepted measure of the phenomenon developed by Shimp and Sharma in 1987. The present study aims to explore levels of consumer ethnocentrism among university students studying at the International University of Sarajevo using the quantitative research method utilizing the survey originally developed by Shimp and Sharma consisting of 17 questions for inferential statistics, plus four questions added by the author for descriptive statistics to explain differences arising due to demographic characteristics of respondents, including nationality, gender, age and income level. Research was carried out in cross-sectional time-frame study manner utilizing convenience sampling methodology. The questionnaire responses were collected from 150 respondents; freshmen and postgraduate Turkish and Bosnian students in paper form. The CETSCALE value of 79.60 for Bosnian students compared to 74.22 for Turkish indicates that Bosnian students tend to be slightly more ethnocentric consumers than Turkish. Additionally, value of CETSCALE of 84.37 for postgraduates compared to 74.24 for freshmen indicates positive relationship between level of consumer ethnocentrism and level of education. Comparing results with those obtained by other researchers in developed countries, both Bosnian and Turkish students showed higher levels of consumer ethnocentrism. High preference for domestic products expressed by Bosnian students might be a signal for domestic companies to focus more on this population in terms of adjusting their products and marketing activities.

Highlights

As markets become borderless and fully integrated, it is important to understand whether consumers are concerned about a product’s country of origin or to what extent nations and cultures prefer domestic products as opposed to foreignM
Consumer ethnocentrism has increasingly been of interest for researchers in the area of consumer behavior and international marketing, as its implications for marketers have shown to be of great importance, since it directly influences consumers’ attitudes and buying preferences.Buying foreign products is perceived wrong as it is believed to be harmful to the domestic economy, unpatriotic and as having an adverse impact on the domestic employment (Akdogan et al, 2012)
The purpose of this study is to examine the level of consumer ethnocentrism among Bosnian and Turkish students studying at the International University of Sarajevo and its relationship with respondents’ demographic characteristics including nationality, gender, income level and year of studying

Summary

Introduction

As markets become borderless and fully integrated, it is important to understand whether consumers are concerned about a product’s country of origin or to what extent nations and cultures prefer domestic products as opposed to foreignM. Ethnocentrism is defined by the Webster’s dictionary as ‘an attitude that one’s own group (race or people) is superior’. It represents a “tendency to see an individual’s own group as the center of the universe, to interpret other social units from a group perspective and to reject those people who are culturally different, blindly accepting those who are culturally similar” (Sainy&Jangalani, 2012). Consumer ethnocentrism has increasingly been of interest for researchers in the area of consumer behavior and international marketing, as its implications for marketers have shown to be of great importance, since it directly influences consumers’ attitudes and buying preferences.Buying foreign products is perceived wrong as it is believed to be harmful to the domestic economy, unpatriotic and as having an adverse impact on the domestic employment (Akdogan et al, 2012). Ethnocentric consumers often make biased judgments and over-evaluate domestic products unreasonably in comparison with foreign products

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Conclusion