Consumer Ethnocentrism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Consumer Ethnocentrism - Essay Example On the other hand, the skepticism shown for the foreign goods in America has persuaded social scientists and researchers to conduct in-depth studies to evaluate and gauge the effect of the ethnocentric behavior of consumers. Efforts are made to summarize the gist of the six articles by eminent social scientists, dealing with this very issue and are included in the bibliography.  Consumer ethnocentrism is defined as a tendency of the natives to prefer their own goods and services, motivated by strong patriotism and fear of economic pitfalls in adopting foreign-made goods and services. Though coined in 1906 by Sumner, it became much popular when Shimp, a social scientist and professor in University of Carolina, undertook extensive studies to observe consumer behaviour in this regard. His results startled many because though it showed overwhelming inclination towards consumer ethnocentrism but the class and education pattern did have significant impact. Economically low segment of soc iety and people with temporary employment and also where there was acute competitiveness, people became more ethnocentric. CETSCALE developed by him became a measurement ‘to measure consumers ethnocentric Tendencies related to purchasing foreign- versus American-made products’ (Shimp and Sharma).  Richard Netemeyer along with his associates, tried to use CETSCALE at cross national perspectives and with multinational samples and found that ‘most of the correlations of the CETSCALE with attitudinal, belief, and ranking variables are significant and, importantly, the pattern of correlations is consistent across each countrys sample, providing evidence of nomological validity’ {Cronbach and Meehl 1955). This was a very positive aspect since the trends in global trade is fast changing towards inter-dependies and mutual cooperation.  Kucukemiroglu, Professor in College of Business Administration,