KOREASCHOLAR

Since Levitt’s (1983) utopic proclamation of globalization-driven market and consumer convergence the determinants, consequences and challenges of addressing globalization have been scrutinized by academics, managers and policy makers. After more than 3 decades of research, however, “there is [still] a dearth of empirical research on its [globalization’s] impact upon consumers” (Cleveland et al., 2016, p. 1090). Such research should also be positioned within a new conceptual framework of geo-economics – resulting in “unique outcomes in different geographic areas” (Merz et al., 2008, p. 169) – where the relationship between regionalism and so-called glocal consumer identities has remained relatively unexplored (Cleveland et al., 2016). International marketers have also been increasingly moving away from country- towards customer-centric approaches (Riefler et al., 2012, p. 285). Young-adult consumers (18-30 years) are believed to be a more homogeneous cohort in terms of their consumer behavior under globalization (Carpenter et al., 2012), as they are seen as glocal citizens (Strizhakova, Coulter, & Price, 2012). The purpose of this paper is to analyze two key consumption-based variables – innate consumer innovativeness (Baumgartner & Steenkamp, 1996) and consumer ethnocentrism (Shimp & Sharma, 1987) – for FMCGs among young-adult consumers across two regions – Central and Eastern Europe (Slovenia, Croatia) and East Asia (China, Japan). Table 1 summarizes the consumer innovativeness and ethnocentrism scores from four matched student samples. Our preliminary results support young adult’s glocal consumer identity (Douglas & Craig, 2011), going beyond regional differences. 5-point ordinal scales Slovenia (n=246) Croatia (n=243) China (n=208) Japan (n=233) Con. innovativeness 4.49 (1.22) 4.70 (1.22) 4.69 (1.19) 4.33 (0.92) Ethnocentrism 2.78 (1.39) 2.93 (1.33) 2.46 (1.29) 2.87 (1.23) Pair-wise correl. 0.146 (p <0.05) 0.03 -0.151 (p <0.05) -0.03

• Zhonghui Ding(University of Ljubljana, Slovenia/ Shanghai University of International Business & Economics, China)
• Davor Vuchkovski(University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
• Vesna Žabkar(University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
• Morikazu Hirose(Tokyo Fuji University, Japan)
• Vatroslav Škare(University of Zagreb, Croatia)
• Đurđana Ozretić Došen(University of Zagreb, Croatia)
• Matevž Rašković(University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)