Across several disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences, recent work on reciprocity in social exchange raises questions about exploitativeness, sustainability and environmental concerns (Weiss, 1987; Ursell, 2000; Smit, 2011; Lewis et al., 2015; Grinstein and Riefler, 2015) with calls to research to explore the importance of consumers’ prosocial activities in relation to concepts such as ethnocentrism (Ratner and Miller, 2001; Olivola and Shafir, 2013; Small and Cryder, 2016). Clearly, while the focus of ethnocentrism is on the consumer’s own group, the focus of many calls for prosocial activities is on the “other”. Hence, a question of interest arises from this: how do these competing forces coexist? In other words, since ethnocentrism is a complex multidimensional construct, how do the different dimensions of ethnocentrism relate to prosocial consumer behaviors? Furthermore, since prosocial behaviors are considered necessary, another question of interest is; how can consumers be urged to engage in prosocial behaviors?
E-WOM is described as all informal communications directed at consumers through Internet-based technology related to the usage or characteristics of particular goods and services, or their sellers (Litvin, Goldsmith and Pan, 2008). In contrast with conventional WOM, e-WOM has unique characteristics. For instance, it often occurs in strangers or fellow consumers, and can be and can be anonymous (Goldsmith & Horowitz 2006; Sen & Lerman 2007). In this regard, people feel free to express opinions without identity disclosure (Goldsmith & Horowitz 2006).
INTRODUCTION
In a word dominated by social media, the diffusion of e-WOM is undoubtedly speeding up. Plus the international trade prevailing, people can experience products from all over the world at home, and they typically collect both positive and negative e-WOM for domestic and foreign brands with the aim of comprehensively evaluating the brands and their products. It is worth mentioning that in reality consumers often adheres to consumer ethnocentrism (CE) to counter the significant effects of imports on domestic economies and defend against foreign products in local markets. So far, there has been relatively little research on the effect of e-WOM on CE. In our study, we employ social media to discover the impacts of e-WOM on CE with respect to domestic and foreign smart phone brands from the Chinese e-WOM receiver’s perspective. Simultaneously, we test consumer pride and prejudice toward mature industries in the home country. Drawing on survey data from 302 consumers, our study reveals several significant findings. First, positive e-WOM regarding local brands may enhance CE, whereas positive e-WOM regarding foreign brands may reduce CE. Second, Negative e-WOM may break the advantage of CE for domestic brand, which result in the dominance of foreign brand. Third, positive e-WOM may enhance brand equity for both domestic and foreign brands. By contrast, negative e-WOM has no significant influence on Chinese consumers’ attitude toward brand equity. Finally, CE has positive influence on brand equity for domestic brand but not effect on foreign brand. To our best of knowledge, our paper is the first to study the effect of e-WOM on CE, which enriches the relevant theory with regard to CE.
Many countries have been reducing trade barriers to enhance movements of products across borders. This moderation of trade policies combined with the enormous growth in cross-border e-commerce has provided consumers with more foreign product choices than ever before. Accordingly, the attitudes toward foreign products have been of great interest to international business and consumer behaviour scholars in the last few years. Previous studies on the effect of country of origin (COO) on product evaluations show that consumers in developed countries prefer domestic over foreign goods for several reasons, ranging from a risk-reducing prejudice to a nationalistic bias against foreign products (Bilkey & Nes, 1982; Wang & Chen, 2004). However, the rising role of emerging markets as valuable demand markets calls for more insights into the psychological, socio-economic and cultural factors that may determine differences in attitudes toward foreign products (Batra, 1997). The study examines the impact of bandwagon luxury consumption behaviour on cultural dimensions - related to consumer ethnocentrism and materialism - and, at the same, verifies the influences exerted by their interactions on attitudes toward luxury goods (brand consciousness, product beliefs, intentions to buy online). It develops and empirically tests a conceptual model of bandwagon luxury consumption on a sample of Chinese consumers.
본 연구는 외국인 소비자들을 대상으로 한류콘텐츠 만족도 및 노출도가 한국산 제품 구매의도에 미치는 영향을 자민족중심주의의 조절효과를 중심으로 실증분석하고 있다. 287명의 외국인 소비자들을 대상으로 실증분석을 실시한 결과 첫째, 한류콘텐츠 만족도와 노출도는 모두 한국산 제품의 구매의도를 높이는 것으로 나타났다. 이러한 결과는 한류콘텐츠에 만족하거나 빈번하게 노출되는 외국인 소비자들의 경우 한국산 제품에 대한 긍정적인 원산지 효과로 인해 한국산 제품의 구매의도가 높아질 수 있다는 것을 시사한다. 둘째, 자민족중심주의의 조절효과를 검증한 결과 자민족중심주의는 한류콘텐츠 만족도와 한국산 제품 구매의도 간의 관계뿐만 아니라 한류콘텐츠 노출도와 한국산 제품 구매의도 간의 관계 모두에서 부(-)의 조절효과를 보이는 것으로 나타났다. 자민족중심적 성향을 지닌 소비자들의 경우 자국산 제품을 애용해야 한다는 신념을 가질 수 있다. 즉, 이러한 결과는 한류콘텐츠 만족도 및 노출도가 한국산 제품 구매의도에 긍정적인 영향을 미친다 하더라도 자민족중심주의가 높은 경우, 이들 간의 긍정적인 관계가 약화될 수 있다는 것을 의미한다. 최근 한류가 사회적으로 큰 관심을 받고 있는 가운데외국 소비자의 한국산 제품 구매의도에 있어 한류콘텐츠의 만족도 및 노출도와 자민족중심주의 간 상호작용효과를 규명하였다는 점에서 본 연구는 국제마케팅 분야에 의미 있는 이론적 시사점을 제시할 수 있을 것으로 판단된다. 뿐만 아니라 본 연구의 분석결과는 한류콘텐츠를 활용하여 해외 시장으로의 진출을 고려하는 많은 한국 기업들에게 유용한 실무적 시사점 역시 제시할 수 있을 것으로 기대된다.
본 연구는 중국의 밀레니엄 세대를 대상으로 소비자 자민족주의(CET) 가치와 자민족주의 광고가 소비자의 국 내 및 외국 브랜드 구매 행위에 미치는 영향을 실증적으로 검증하였다. CET 선행 연구에서는 소비자의 CET 가 치가 구매 행위에 미치는 영향에만 치중하여 온 반면에, 마케팅 자극에 의한 효과에 관한 연구는 미흡하였다. 본 연구에서는 CET 효과와 함께, 자민족주의 광고의 효과도 분석하였다. 이를 위해, 가상 광고를 제작하여 220명 을 대상으로 실험 연구를 수행하였다.
검증 결과, 우선, CET의 효과가 내국 브랜드와 외국 브랜드에 따라 다르게 미치는 것으로 나타났다. CET를 독단주의와 애국심 CET로 구분하여 분석하면, 내국 브랜드에 대해서는 독단주의와 애국심 CET 모두 유의한 영 향을 미쳤으나, 외국 브랜드에 대해서는 애국심만 영향을 미치는 것으로 발견되었다. 연구의 또 다른 결과는 자 민족주의 광고가 내국 브랜드 선택에는 영향이 없으나, 외국 브랜드에는 유의한 영향을 미친다는 점이다. 그러나, 자민족주의 광고가 CET 가치가 높은 소비자에게는 높게 나타나고, 그렇지 않은 소비자에게는 나타나지 않는 확 증 편향(Sullivan, 2009)은 발견되지 않다.
본 연구는 사회정체성이론, 유사성-호감이론, 신호이론 등에 근거하여 한국에서 경영활동을 수행하고 있는 다 국적기업 자회사 현지 직원의 자민족중심주의와 문화적 갈등이 현지 직원의 긍정심리자본에 부(-)의 영향을 미칠 것이라고 주장하였다. 또한 다국적기업 자회사의 사회책임활동이 ‘자민족중심주의와 긍정심리자본 간의 관계’와 ‘문화적 갈등과 긍정심리자본 간의 관계’를 부(-)의 방향으로 조절할 것이라고 주장하였다. 9개국 출신, 23개 다 국적기업 자회사에 근무 중인 281명의 현지(한국인) 직원들을 대상으로 설문조사를 통해 획득한 자료를 활용하 여 위계적 회귀분석을 통해 이상의 주장을 실증적으로 검증하였다.
China has been the biggest factory in the world, most of products are marked “made in China”. With the rapid grows of consumption in China, it is also the biggest market. However, Chinese consumers with deep-rooted Confucian value system may different from Western countries (Ramasamy & Yeung, 2009). Do they still have strong consumer ethnocentrism? Or they can accept all the things they made but with the foreign brands?
The power of WOM to influence customer attitude toward one brand is well known to all the marketing researchers. But the fast development of internet and social media network changed consumers’ behavior, word-of-mouth has acquired electronic WOM (e-WOM) as a new name (Goyette et al, 2010). Customer use E-WOM to evaluate product and make purchase decision.
Ethnocentric consumers are against foreign brands as they believe that purchasing these brands will hurt domestic economy and brands, cause loss of jobs and increase the power of capitalist companies and dependency of poorer economies to them (Kaynak & Eksi, 2013). But customers are will to searching the better products. Such as Chinese mainland consumers hire purchase agent to shopping aboard. The purchase agent post information in the social media network as eWOM. This research wants to explore the young Chinese still have high ethnocentric tendency or not influenced by eWOM. If E-WOM can be a marketing method to reduce the ethnocentrism when foreign brands entry a new country. And also the domestic brands can use E-WOM to enhance ethnocentrism to against foreign brands.
In this research, study 1 tests positive E-WOM or negative E-WOM to test if it can enhance Chinese consumers’ ethnocentrism or reduce their ethnocentrism for their own country products. This research also tests if consumer ethnocentrism can influence on brand equity and purchase intention.
Based on the literature review, researchers establish concept model was shown in Table 1.
This study uses SPSS and AMOS to analysis the sample. Based on the results this research gives suggestions to both academic and practice.
This research examines how consumer ethnocentrism and global social bonding affect consumer appreciation for foreign products in the home country. Our research findings show that consumer ethnocentrism lowers diversity appreciation; global social bonding enhances diversity appreciation; and global social bonding moderates the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and diversity appreciation.
Consumer ethnocentrism (CET) has been widely research in various marketing contexts since the construct was identified by Shimp and Sharma (1987) in their seminal paper. The central tenet of consumer ethnocentrism theory is that consumer ethnocentrism will have a negative effect on foreign product purchase intention and a positive effect on willingness to purchase home country products. So far, the role of satisfaction has not been integrated into the CET model. The satisfaction-repurchase relationship has also received considerable attention in the marketing literature whereby satisfaction is found to have a direct positive effect on repeat purchase. Anecdotal evidence suggests that both satisfaction and consumer ethnocentrism will have a joint effect on willingness to repurchase a home country product, especially when foreign competitor products are seen as a threat in the domestic markets. However, it remains unclear how satisfaction and consumer ethnocentrism jointly affect purchase intentions. In this research we examine the dynamics of the two constructs. This study considers South Korean consumers’ willingness to repurchase the Samsung Galaxy smartphone and examine the interrelationship among the above variables. The findings of the study suggest that consumer ethnocentrism moderates the satisfaction-repurchase intention relationship or vice versa and satisfaction and consumer ethnocentrism are mutual cooperative suppressors for repurchase intention. This study highlights that the effect of consumer ethnocentrism on repurchase intention will be stronger when consumers are satisfied with the product.
The limited available empirical evidence indicates that consumer ethnocentrism does not have a uniform effect on consumer buying (e.g., Klein, Ettenson & Morris 1998; Suh & Kwon 2002). The paper comes to address this gap by investigating the inconsistency of ethnocentric behaviours and the factors underlying such inconsistencies. More specifically, brand, product category and country of origin (COO) effects are examined for their impact on behavioural consumer ethnocentric bias. Contrary to the main stream of research in this area, which concentrates on general attitudes towards the products or buying intentions (e.g., Balabanis & Diamantopoulos 2004; Poon et al. 2010; Sharma etal. 1995; Shimp & Sharma 1987; Verlegh 2007; Wang & Chen 2004) this paper focuses on behavioural outcomes of consumer ethnocentrism. In addition, it adopts a more focused approach and examines the impact of consumer ethnocentrism on the purchase of specific brands, rather than the impact of consumer ethnocentrism on general product categorisations or simple foreigndomestic product dichotomies. Hypotheses are developed to explain observed differences in the behavioural effects of consumer ethnocentrism. The hypotheses are tested on a sample of 468 US consumers involving purchases in 10 product categories, 432 brands and 22 countries of origin. Results confirm that product category is an important determinant of the behavioural effects of consumer ethnocentrism. Consumer ethnocentrism was found to have an impact on the purchases of the most expensive product categories rather than the frequently purchase convenient items. There is also some limited evidence regarding the moderating role of globalness of brands on the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase behaviour. The cultural proximity of the country of origin of foreign brands was found to have no effect on the purchasing behaviour of ethnocentric consumers.
The objective of this paper is to understand consumers’ responses (attitude, perception of quality and luxury) to production delocalization in the luxury industry, based on brand origin matching consumers’ origin or not, in order to understand the interaction brand origin and consumer ethnocentrism on those responses.Two experiments were conducted. Study 1 exposes 166 respondents (French, Italian and other European) to a message of delocalization of either a French or Italian brand supposed to delocalize production to China. Study 2 assesses, among 62 French women, the implicit preference toward French luxury brands (through the Implicit Association Test, Greenwald et al. 1998) and the level of consumer ethnocentrism (through CETSCALE, Sharma et al. 1995). Then, the group is exposed between subjects to 2 delocalization messages X 2 country of delocalization (China, Poland EU) Although brand origin is not salient when consumers evaluate brands (no explicit preference for French brands over Italian brands across studies), it is nonetheless present below awareness, as part of the brand heritage and the brand identity (measured through an implicit preference for French brands over Italian brands among our French respondents). It manifests in context of brands delocalizing out of the home country. Across studies, the attitude toward the brand, the perception of quality and perception of luxury is affected negatively post-exposure to a message of delocalization. Yet, this result is moderated by consumer ethnocentrism and message framing. When the message induces positive consequences for the brand and for the national economy, French respondents (and Italian respondents in study 1) are less affected by the delocalization of their home brands than other respondents. In turn, when the message highlights a loss in national employment, respondents judge the brand more negatively. The effect is stronger for respondents higher in ethnocentrism. The country of delocalization does not influence those results. There is scarcity of papers investigating the CoO effect for luxury brands, although the luxury business model and luxury brand identity are rooted into brand origin. This paper is the first to our knowledge to investigate the effect of brand origin and consumer ethnocentrism on brand delocalization.
This study was to observe how globalization has transformed the attitudes and behaviors of consumers especially in the emerging economy environment such as Malaysia. The aim of this article is to identify the differences in consumers’ product preference for products made in 4 different countries – Japan, Korea, Malaysia and China. Further, this article also aims to analyze how consumers’ ethnocentrism affects product preference as well as how the effect of ethnocentrism varies across products from different countries of origin and product involvement levels. Information for consumers’ product preference was collected through a structured questionnaire from the Malaysian consumers. Concentrating on 2 product categories from 4 different countries, the questions in the questionnaire particularly focused on three different levels of analysis; in addition, CETSCALE was used to measure consumer ethnocentrism. Finally, the hypotheses were tested using ANOVA and t-test statistics, etc. The results provided support for all of the hypotheses, thereby revealing the presence of significant differences in consumer product preference, which is engendered by country of origin, consumer ethnocentrism and product involvement level effect. The research results here have implications for future studies on the effects of country of origin and consumers’ ethnocentrism in developing countries. Moreover, the results also contributed to the validation of CETSCALE in a culturally diversified environment.