Country of origin and ethnocentrism in the context of lateral, upward and downward migration

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of consumer ethnocentrism and country of origin across different immigrant communities. Design/methodology/approach A survey was used to collect data from immigrants in the USA and Mexico. Findings For immigrants with high levels of ethnocentrism, the bias for home and host country products interacts with the country of origin effect and creates multiple scenarios where the two effects move in the same or opposite directions. For immigrants with low levels of ethnocentrism, on the other hand, the country of origin effect alone is salient. Research limitations/implications The authors used a modified version of CETSCALE. Future research should revisit the content and dimensionality of consumer ethnocentrism in immigrant and other multicultural settings. Practical implications Both scholars and practitioners should exercise caution when working with ethnocentrism and country of origin as today’s societies are increasingly multicultural, which requires major modifications to the theories and tools. Social implications Similar to ways in which the US Census Bureau enabled multicultural consumers to assert their mixed identities, scholarly and business circles should embrace multiculturalism and empower immigrants. Originality/value Previous studies of consumer ethnocentrism and country of origin in multicultural contexts have restricted themselves to only one pattern of migration: consumers who move from developing to developed countries. The paper addresses this limitation by investigating various patterns of migration (including lateral, upward and downward) in multiple first-generation immigrant communities in two countries.

Consumption choice-making among first-generation Chinese immigrants in New Zealand

“…Both language competence and acculturation were negatively associated with ethnic identification and preference for ethnic businesses. These results were also similar to those of prior research with Chinese Canadian (Chung and Fischer 1999;Wang 2004;Wang and Lo 2007) and other foreign-born consumer groups (Segev et al 2014;Zolfagharian et al 2017).…”

“…Our findings on the time-dependent age and education variables were in line with the common longitudinal effects of ethnic identity [e.g. identity navigation (Penaloza 1994;Zolfagharian et al 2017)], and acculturation (Ward and Rana-Deuba 1999;Berry 2017). We observed that younger and pre-degree holding participants were more ethnocentric in their consumption choices than their older and post-degree holding counterparts.…”

“…The feelings of belongingness and pride that arise from ethnocentrism (Bizumic 2014) 1 could influence the consumption choices of immigrants in the favour of ethnic brands and businesses (Wang 2004). Studies with ethnic retailers (Parzer 2016;Das et al 2017) and foreign-born consumers (Chung and Fischer 1999;Wang 2004;Wang and Lo 2007;Zolfagharian et al 2017) provide support for the ethnocentric view on immigrant consumer behaviour.…”

“…by joining the workforce). Such diversity, however, could challenge mainstream operations (Zolfagharian et al 2017) in multiple ways. For example, it could create the need for bi/multilingual advertising (Özdinç 2020) or staffing (Bond et al 2013;Tombs and Hill 2014).…”

Guest editorial

“…The final paper by Zolfagharian et al (2017) examines the effects of consumer ethnocentrism and COO across different immigrant communities. Previous studies on consumer ethnocentrism and COO focus only on one type of migration: consumers who move from developing to developed countries.…”