Culture and Consumer Behaviour: Comparisons between Malays and Chinese in Malaysia

Abstract

Many researches have been conducted to elucidate the decision process of consumers. This is mainly because of the fluidity of consumers' decision process since it evolves over time and space, as well as in different environments such as culture and race. This study attempts to focus on a single community with dual ethnic groups, i.e. the Malays and the Chinese in Malaysia. Thus, this study differs from the previous studies in that it attempts to compare two ethnic groups of diverse culture and religious background, within a single Malaysian community. The focuses here are on the students from Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) and University Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) because of their respective homogeneous racial composition of either purely Malay or Chinese youths, respectively. The findings of the MANOVA showed that there is difference in term of individualism/collectivism (IDV), uncertainty avoidance (UAI) and long-term orientation (LTO) between Malays and Chinese. Despite the long-term co-existence between the Malays and the Chinese, as this study has revealed, these two ethnic groups, although different in their religions, cultures and the means by which wealth is being acquired, do reflect dissimilarities in their decision-making, choice of products, branding and responses towards advertisements.