Political consumerism in emerging markets: the case of Argentina

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to identify factors that trigger behaviour of political consumerism in Argentina. According to our research almost 45% of survey's respondents are identified as political consumers. The research aims to find out how much better recent Echegaray's (2016) conceptual top-down corporate mobilisation model in comparison to his bottom-up model, based on post-materialism and sub-politics, explains political consumerism in Argentina. Besides deductive verification of both models, the paper also explores whether further recent model's extensions, using variables of moral obligation and political media usage, would shed more light into the investigated topic. According to our research the corporate mobilisation model better explains behaviour of political consumerism in current Argentina than the post-materialist sub-politicisation model. Further extensions of this model proved even higher significance. Political consumption behaviour is explained mainly by high interest in business and politics, which brings important implications for Argentinian companies and government in the forms of socially responsible practices' implementation and promotion to the common benefit of Argentinian society.