The Effect of Personal Cultural Orientation on Consumer Ethnocentrism

TLDR

In the global marketplace, consumers often resist buying imports, and while research has begun to link consumer types to anti‑import attitudes, little is known about how individual cultural orientation shapes this bias. The study aims to examine how individual cultural orientation relates to consumer ethnocentrism. The authors hypothesize that each of Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions at the individual level influences consumer ethnocentrism and test this by examining U.S. consumers’ evaluations and behaviors toward Japanese products.

Abstract

Abstract A great challenge in the global environment lies in consumers' reluctance to buy imports rather than domestic products. Recently, research has begun to explore the link between consumer type and adversarial attitudes toward imports. However, relatively little is known about the relationship between individual consumers' cultural orientation and their bias against imports. The objective of our research is to examine the relationship between cultural orientation and consumer ethnocentrism. We hypothesize that each of Hofstede's (2001) five dimensions of cultural orientation, operationalized at the individual level, affects consumer ethnocentrism. We test our hypotheses, investigating U.S. consumers evaluations of and behaviors toward Japanese products. The results show that collectivism (versus individualism), masculinity (versus femininity), and uncertainty-avoidance are related positively to consumer ethnocentrism, whereas long-term (versus short-term) orientation are related negatively to consumer ethnocentrism. The results also confirm the relationships between consumer ethnocentrism and its consequential variables of U.S. consumers' evaluations and behaviors toward Japanese products are meaningful and strong.