Measuring Consumer Ethnocentrism in a Developing Context: An Assessment of the Reliability, Validity and Dimensionality of the CETSCALE

Abstract

Research in the field of international marketing has identified consumer ethnocentrism as a possible reason why consumers would buy domestic rather than imported products. Consumer ethnocentrism implies that consumers may regard the purchase of foreign products as “wrong,” as it might harm the domestic economy and result in job losses in industries that compete with imports. Consumer ethnocentrism and the measurement thereof has been actively researched in many, especially developed, countries but there is a dearth of knowledge about the impact of consumer ethnocentrism in developing countries. This study was conducted in response to calls by several researchers to investigate the validity, reliability, and dimensionality of the CETSCALE, a scale to measure consumer ethnocentrism, in developing markets. An original contribution of this study is that two subsamples, namely a sample of white and a sample of black South African respondents were surveyed to account for the ethnic diversity in South Africa. Results indicate that, as has been found for two other African countries (Mozambique and Ghana), the CETSCALE should be regarded as a multi-dimensional measuring instrument for South Africa.