Consumer ethnocentrism and attitudes toward domestic and foreign products

Abstract

Investigates the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and consumer attitudes toward foreign manufactured products in product categories in which domestic alternatives are not available. Such decision situations (i.e. product choice in categories with no domestic alternative) are common for consumers in many smaller countries throughout Europe, and thus important for marketing managers to understand. It was hypothesised that individuals with high levels of consumer ethnocentrism would have more favourable attitudes toward products from culturally similar countries in comparison to products from culturally dissimilar countries. The values classification of culture proposed by Schwartz was used to establish cultural similarity, and the attitudes of a representative sample of New Zealand consumers were assessed using a nation‐wide mail survey. Our results suggest that cultural similarity is an important consideration for highly ethnocentric consumers in the evaluation of foreign products. A number of theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.