Volume 43, July 2015, Pages 113–121
Does consumer ethnocentrism influence product knowledge?
Highlights
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- Consumer ethnocentrism shows a significant negative effect on product knowledge.
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- Difference regarding product knowledge between the different nationalities exists.
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- Consumer ethnocentrism fully mediates the link between age and product knowledge.
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- Gender and education didn’t show any significant effect on product knowledge.
Abstract
Consumer
ethnocentrism refers to the consumer opinion as to whether or not it is
appropriate or even immoral to purchase foreign-made products. The
focus of this paper is to analyze the relationship between consumer
ethnocentrism and consumer knowledge structures with the example of
Bavarian food products. By means of concept mapping and structured
interviews with 193 consumers in three different European countries,
consumer ethnocentrism and knowledge of Bavarian food products was
queried. Results of count-data regression models show that there is a
negative relation between consumer ethnocentrism and the complexity of
product knowledge. While there is no significant effect of gender, age
and education, nationality matters with regard to the complexity of
cognitive structures. The information about the relation between the
level of consumer ethnocentrism and product knowledge can help marketers
to segment the market more effectively and thus to successfully target
different consumer groups with appropriate product communication.
Keywords
- Associative network;
- Cognitive structures;
- Concept mapping;
- Consumer ethnocentrism;
- Count data analysis.
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