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Documente Cultură
1. Introduction
*
Corresponding author: Faculty of Management, University College of Science and Technology,
21030 Terengganu, Malaysia; email: abrazak@kustem.edu.my
**
Corresponding author: Faculty of Management, University College of Science and Technology,
21030 Terengganu, Malaysia; email: abrazak@kustem.edu.my
***
Faculty of Business & Accountancy, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia;
email:mohdnor@ummail.um.edu.my
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2. Research Purpose
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3. Literature Review
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4. Research Hypotheses
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detected that respondents from Los Angeles were less ethnocentric than were
those from Denver, Detroit and the Carolinas.
H1: A negative correlation is expected between cultural openness and
consumer ethnocentrism. That is, consumers who are familiar with and
open to foreign cultures show less consumer ethnocentric tendencies
than those who are not familiar and are less open to other cultures.
Conservatism. It is generally understood that conservative people
show a tendency to cherish traditions and social institutions that have
survived the test of time and to introduce changes only occasionally and
reluctantly. The extreme conservative has the following characteristics: pro-
establishment, preference for the conventional, insistence for strict rules and
punishments, and an anti-hedonic outlook [50]. Ethnocentrism researchers [3,
20, 37] have found an inverse relationship between conservatism and
attitudes toward foreign products; that is, conservative people tend to
evaluate imports negatively and domestic products positively.
H2: A positive correlation is expected between conservatism and consumer
ethnocentric tendencies. The proposition is that consumers who cherish
traditions and social institutions tend to evaluate imports negatively and
domestic products positively.
Collectivism. The dimension of individualism-collectivism relates to
humans relationship with one another and this has been investigated by
several social scientists [24, 47]. Individualistic societies are those who value
the individuals relative to group in terms of achievement and recognition.
Collectivistic societies, on the other hand, place an importance on the group
rather than individuals, stress cooperation among group members and the
importance of group goals rather than individual goals. Collectivistic persons
are likely to evince strong consumer-ethnocentric tendencies because they
tend to consider the effect of their behavior on society, feel responsible for
others and are more susceptible to social influence against imports [46];
individualistic persons on the contrary, have less consumer-ethnocentric
tendencies because they act primarily for their own benefit.
H3: The correlation between collectivism and consumer ethnocentrism is
expected to be positive; that is people with collectivistic goals will
display more intensive ethnocentric tendencies than those with
individualistic goals.
Fatalism. Fatalism is defined as the belief that all events are
predetermined by fate and therefore unalterable by man [27]. People with a
relatively high degree of fatalism would be similar to those who believe that
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man must simply take events as they come, instead of being able to plan,
avoid or master the environment. Hirschman [16] cites literature indicating
that Catholics are relatively fatalistic, Protestants are lower in fatalism and
Jews are high in terms of internal locus of control. The idea of fatalism may
also help to explain cross-cultural differences in the levels of perceived risk
and product choice between domestic and imported [17].
H4: A positive correlation is expected between fatalism and consumers
ethnocentric tendencies; that is, consumers who are highly fatalistic
should show high ethnocentric tendencies than those who are less
fatalistic.
Materialism. Belk [4: p.265] defines materialism as the importance
a consumer attaches to worldly possessions which assume a central place in a
persons life and are believed to provide the greatest source of satisfaction
and dissatisfaction. The author suggests that four distinct measures, namely
money orientation, possessiveness, non-generosity and envy over possessions
of others can provide a satisfactory measure of materialism to an individual.
Materialistic consumers tend to evaluate foreign products more favorably as
these products are associated with image status, wealth and personal
achievement [4, 18].
H5: A negative correlation is expected between materialism and consumer
ethnocentrism. This means materialistic consumers should show less
ethnocentric orientation compared to those who are less materialistic
Demographic Factors. On logical grounds, Malay consumers are expected
to be more conservative than the Chinese due to their indigenous status and
patriotic emotions. Hence, they are predicted to have strong ethnocentric
tendencies and would rate local products as important to save the nations
economy. Females are known to be more conservative, more conformist [9],
more patriotic [14], highly ethnocentric [22], more concerned about
preserving social harmony and promoting positive feelings among group
members and less individualistic [46]. In general, consumers from the West
Coast of Malaysia are more urbanized and have a higher income. They tend
to travel abroad and try more products, which may result in more
cosmopolitan views and greater openness to foreign culture.
H6: Malays are expected to exhibit greater consumer ethnocentric
tendencies than Chinese (H6a); female consumers are expected to
exhibit greater consumer ethnocentric tendencies than the males (H6b);
and consumers from the East Coast region are expected to exhibit
greater consumer ethnocentric tendencies than those from the West
Coast region.
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5. Study Method
5.1 Measures
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6. Sample Characteristics
A total of 248 responses that were obtained from the survey deemed
usable for data analysis. Table 1 depicts a demographic profile of the
respondents. The sample consisted of 29.4% males and 70.6% females. In
terms of ethnicity, Malays constituted the largest ethnic group, accounting for
69.8% of the respondents whilst Chinese respondents made up for 30.2%.
Statistics on residential region showed that 47.6% of the respondents were
residing in the West Coast region while another 52.4% were from the East
Coast region. Finally, the mean age of the respondents was 21.98 years old.
Table 1. Demographic Profiles of the Respondents
Demographic Frequency Percentage
Variables (n) (%)
Gender
Male 73 29.4
Female 175 70.6
Ethnicity
Malay 173 69.8
Chinese 75 30.2
Residence
West Coast
East Coast 118 47.6
130 52.4
Age (mean = 21.98)
On the scale of 1 to 5, the mean CETSCALE score for the sample was
relatively low (3.32) and similarly the mean scores for other constructs were
quite modest such as openness to foreign culture (3.84), conservatism (2.91),
collectivism (3.44), fatalism (2.04), and materialism (2.83) (see Table 2).
Table 2 also depicts the Cronbachs reliability coefficients and the number of
items used to compute the alpha value for each dimension used in this study.
The table shows that five factors were found to have an acceptable level of
internal consistencies: (a) openness to foreign culture (= 0.51),
conservatism ( =0.60), collectivism ( = 0.57), materialism (= 0.74) and
ethnocentrism ( = 0.82). Fatalism dimension however, was considered
unreliable as it fell below 0.50 ( = 0.48). Nunnally [35] suggests reliability
of higher than 0.5 as indication of satisfactory internal consistency. However,
the satisfactory level also depends on how the measurement is being used.
Perhaps an important property of Cronbachs alpha is that the coefficient
score tends to increase with an increase in the number of items included [30].
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support Hypothesis 1. The more consumers are familiar and open to foreign
culture, the less they show consumer ethnocentric tendencies as compared to
those who are less open. Hypothesis 2 is confirmed in that there was a
positive correlation between conservatism and consumer ethnocentrism (
= .207, t = 3.562, p< .000). People with conservative attitudes are expected to
show greater consumer ethnocentric tendencies than those who are less
conservative. The results show that there was no significant relationship
between collectivism and consumer ethnocentrism. Hypothesis 3 is therefore
rejected.
Table 3. Stepwise Regression Results of Ethnocentric Tendencies with
Socio-Cultural and Demographic Variables
Standardized
Sig. t Significance Tolerance
Independent Variables Beta ()
Statistic level Value
coefficients
Openness -.306 -5.143 .000 .88
Conservative .207 3.562 .000 .925
Collectivism NS NS NS NE
Fatalism .264 4.214 .000 .798
Materialistic NS NS NS NE
Gendera NS NS NS NE
Ethnicityb -.158 -2.371 .019 .70
Religionc NS NS NS NE
Residenced NS NS NS NE
R 2 for the model = .32 (adj. R 2 = .31), statistic F = 25.781, p<.0001
a: dummy variable with 0 = male and 1 = female
b: dummy variable with 0 = Malay and 1 = Chinese
c: dummy variable with 0 = Muslim and 1 = non-Muslim
d: dummy variable with 0 = West Coast and 1 = East Coast and East Malaysia
NS = not significant
NE = not entered due to insignificant result
Hypothesis 4 is supported by a positive, highly significant association
between fatalism and consumer ethnocentric tendencies ( = .264, t = 4.214,
p< .0001), suggesting that people with highly fatalistic attitudes manifest
greater consumer ethnocentric tendencies as compared to those who are less
fatalistic. Counter to our expectation, however, correlation was not found
between materialism and consumer ethnocentric tendencies. Hence,
Hypothesis 5 is rejected. Hypothesis 6a is also rejected based on insignificant
correlation between gender and consumer ethnocentric tendencies, which
means that there is no difference between males and females on
ethnocentrism measure. In examining the relationship between Malays and
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References
[1] [1] Abdul Razak K (1999) Ethnosentrisme pengguna: Sejauh mana
kepentingannya terhadap ekonomi? (Consumer ethnocentrism: Its
significance on economy. Dewan Ekonomi, Dec, 8-9
[2] Andaleeb S (1995) Country-of-origin effects: A country-category effect
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34 (9/10), 1149-1166
[50]Wilson GD. and Patterson JR (1968) A new measurement of
conservatism. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 7, 254-
269
[51]Yagci S (2001) Evaluating the effects of country-of-origin and consumer
ethnocentrism: A case of a transplant product. Journal of International
Consumer Marketing, 13 (3), 63-85
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