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- Title
Consumer Ethnocentrism: Relevance and Implications for Marketers.
- Authors
Khan, Mohammed Naved; Rizvi, Shamseen Raza
- Abstract
As markets turn borderless and become integrated, we need to understand whether consumers are concerned about a product's country of origin or to what extent nations and cultures prefer domestic (native) products as opposed to foreign goods. The feelings of consumers towards foreign products have been, for many years, a subject of interest to researchers working in the areas of consumer behavior and international marketing. The concept of ethnocentrism 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. Symbols and values of one's ethnical and national group are seen as objects of pride and unity while values of other groups are looked upon contemptuously. This perception in certain cases has been found to transcend mere economic and functional considerations, and to have a more noble foundation rooted in morality. Some consumers believe it is somehow wrong to purchase foreign-made products because it will hurt the domestic economy and cause loss of jobs, and in their view, it is plainly unpatriotic. Generally, research in the area has revealed that some consumers are prone to being ethnocentric when evaluating products. Highly ethnocentric consumers tend to make biased judgments, because of which they over-evaluate domestic products unreasonably in comparison with foreign products. Consumers' ethnic sentiments and national identity have been found to play an increasingly important role in the decision making process, even in the light of increasing homogenization and globalization of world markets. Though results have shown that consumer ethnocentrism does impact behavior of the consumer regarding foreignmade products, researchers have observed that the results are not consistent across nations and cultures. Thus, there exists a pressing need for replicative as well as extension studies in the area. In the light of the above, the purpose of the present paper is to explore the underlying meaning and significance of the concept of consumer ethnocentrism with special reference to India. As the first step, researchers have tried to explore the ethnocentric tendencies prevalent among the Indian youth. Keeping the same objective in mind, CETSCALE, developed by Shimp and Sharma (1987) was administered to a representative sample of students. It is expected that the findings will provide vital inputs to marketers in dovetailing their marketing strategies and also prevent them from committing the mistake of imposing perspectives applicable to other cultures and nations to the Indian market.
- Subjects
INDIA; ETHNOCENTRISM; NATIONALISM; COMMERCIAL products; CONSUMER preferences; CONSUMER behavior; EXPORT marketing; INTERNATIONAL trade
- Publication
ICFAI Journal of Consumer Behavior, 2008, Vol 3, Issue 1, p52
- ISSN
0973-3760
- Publication type
Article