We had asked a specialized group to read an article titled: "Consumer ethnocentrism and attitudes towards domestic and foreign markets" written by John J. Watson and Katrina Wright and summarize it later. The basis of this case study was to investigate the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and consumer attitudes towards certain products where there is not a domestic alternative available. When referring to consumer ethnocentrism Triandis says that it is what is seen in our culture as being "Natural" and "correct" and what goes on in other cultures as being "unnatural" and "incorrect". So, with regards to the article, the authors are trying to find out whether people will buy foreign products from countries which have a similar culture to their own. This could be anything from an Irish consumer of chocolate buy a Chinese brand of chocolate (whose culture is very different from the Irish Culture) when there is a chocolate bar from England (whose culture is very similar to Ireland's) in the same shop.
[...] After this they chose the products which they would be using which ended up being Refrigerators (where there is a domestic alternative) and Television and cameras (there is no domestic alternative). They chose these product categories as they are similar in terms of financial risk, technological complexity, complexity of the purchase task, and the personal involvement of the consumer in the purchase task according to Ahmed and d'Astous (1996). How was the task preformed? When trying to find out about whether consumer ethnocentrism existed in regards of this question which the report hoped to answer the authors focused on asking about three main areas which were: 1. [...]
[...] It was found that consumers with high ethnocentrism were found to be more willing to buy and have favorable attitudes towards products from culturally similar countries than from culturally dissimilar countries. In the case of when there was no domestic alternative available the results were very similar. All the time the people with high ethnocentrism chose products from countries of similar cultures and least favorable to products from culturally dissimilar countries. The most surprising results came from people who were calculated to have apparently low levels of consumer ethnocentrism. [...]
[...] When a consumer, who is highly ethnocentric has to make a decision between two products (when there is no domestic alternative available) they will look more favorably towards products from countries who are culturally similar 2. When making a decision between products (When there is no domestic alternative available) the consumer is more likely to purchase a product from a country which is culturally similar to that of its own All this previous work was secondary research for these researchers. [...]
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