Ethnocentrism Among Indian Consumers : Does it Matter?

<p>Consumer ethnocentrism is a psychological concept where consumer ponders about the appropriateness of purchasing foreign products against domestics ones. Highly ethnocentric consumers hesitate to purchase foreign products. Due to globalization Indian consumer is exposed to large range of foreign and domestic products in the market. Domestic brands are being challenged in their own home market bringing greater changes in the consumer behavior. Considering that natural and ayurveda science has got its historical roots in India, the study of level of consumer ethnocentrism in this category becomes quite relevant. Many Indian and foreign brands are gaining increased interest in this segment. The current study tries to measure the significance of ethnocentrism in the purchase behavior of the Indian consumers towards natural and ayurveda beauty care products. It considers the relationship between various demographic variables like gender, age, and education with ethnocentrism for this product segment.</p> <p>&nbsp;The study employed 17 item CETSCALE (Consumer Ethnocentric Tendencies Scale) by Shimp and Sharp as the measuring tool on a five point Likert scale.<span> </span>A sample of 160 respondents from the city of Chandigarh was&nbsp; drawn using convenience sampling. Factor analysis has been performed to extract a set of well defined factors from the 17 item scale. The hypothesis has been tested using t-test and ANOVA against the statements that have the highest factor loadings for each factor using SPSS24.</p> <p>The results showed moderate ethnocentric behavior of the Indian consumers towards natural and ayurveda beauty care products. A partially significant relationship has been found among the variables and the ethnocentric behavior of consumer. The study can be expanded to include the level of awareness the people posses for the foreign brand and Indian brand.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>