Consumer Ethnocentrism and Its Effects on Attitude and Behaviour of Chinese Consumers

Yu Du

COMPUTER MODELLING & NEW TECHNOLOGIES 2014 18(12C) 748-753

School of Economics and Management of Anhui University of Science & Technology, Huainan city, Anhui Province, China, 232001

Recently, China has attracted foreign investment at growing speed, and made many foreign corporations penetrate to domestic market. Even though the competition between domestic and foreign corporations becomes more and more intense, Chinese consumers are reluctant to buy foreign products rather than domestic products. Consumer ethnocentrism (CE) is one of the reasons that people choose domestic products than foreign products. It is necessary to investigate the causes of CE and its effects on attitude and behavior among Chinese consumers. In this study, conservatism has a positive effect on CE of young consumers even though they tend to be liberalized gradually, and collectivism shows relatively strong influence on their CE. In addition, CE has strong effect on purchase intention to mobile phone and household appliances, but not to automobile. This empirical result means that CE has a different effect on purchase intention depending on product categories. This means that people cannot predict the positive effect of CE on purchase intention to all products.