Consumer Ethnocentrism: a Concept to Support the Increase the Economic Resilience of a Market

Abstract

This paper aims to identify some local specifics of the ethnocentrism tendency in Romania, together with some socio-psychological variables related to buying local products. It was also analyzed the existence of a correlation between the socioeconomic development of a county and the level of ethnocentrism of consumers in that county. In order to be able to assess the level of socio-economic development, an aggregate indicator composed of five dimensions was built. Most of the data was gathered using a structured online questionnaire, filled by 1246 Romanians, but there was also used the statistical data. Ethnocentrism was measured using the consumer ethnocentric tendency scale (CETSCALE). The socio-psychological variables were used to measure if they have influence on the CETSCALE. The data was analyzed with the SPSS 20.0 statistics software for Windows, using descriptive statistics, factor analysis and correlation. The search results show some regional aspects of the consumers that could be of interest for companies and government.

Keywords

• consumer behavior
• local products
• ethnocentrism
• cetscale
• sociopsychological variables
• socio-economic aggregate indicator