Examining Young People's Attitude toward Special Domestic Items in Hungary

Abstract

In our study we have examined the awareness and attitudes of young people (18-24 years) in Hungary toward a special selection of items: as several countries in the world, Hungary also has its own list of domestic products, places and historical heritages, which are called 'hungaricums'. These items could be defined as the core elements of patriotism, thus they are able to induce strong ethnocentric behavior. Our aim was to differentiate the emotional attitudes by gender. To achieve that, we have designed an online survey in order to get a basic understanding about the young people's attitude toward the hungaricums and the gender differences in this age group. We have found that the hungaricums are known in this age group, but most of them has a really small spontaneous awareness. Based on the opinion of the respondents the most typical hungaricum is the schnapps ('palinka'), and the Ilcsi natural cosmetics are the less typical to our country. By analyzing the gender differences with using ANOVA method we could conclude that the evaluation of the females is significantly higher in eight cases. Based on this evaluation we grouped the hungaricums with using the MDS method, and our results show that there are also some differences between the males and females. This study is the first step of a complex neuromarketing study, where we examined the visual representation of the hungaricums in an fMRI machine. Further extension of the research project is to check the attention and interest with the usage of an eye tracking device.