Identifying and Evaluating Consumer Ethnocentric Tendencies: An assessment of the Reliability and Validity of the CETSCALE among Portuguese food consumers.
(A2020-62696)

AUTHORS

Luis Miguel, ISCTE-IUL

KEYWORDS

Ethnocentrism; Consumer Behaviour; Country of Origin

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to evaluate the level of Portuguese consumer ethnocentrism, (CE) and its implications on food products evaluation. For that, the Consumer Ethnocentric Tendencies Scale (CETSCALE) will be used. A questionnaire was developed and completed by online survey resulting on 113 valid responses. The food products under consideration are, beef, carrots and oranges as those products represent the major sales in the meat, vegetables and fruit categories respectively in a major retail chain in Portugal The level of ethnocentrism tendency for the given sample was 57,5 which is just above the mean for the 13-item scale presented. The validity and reliability of the CETSCALE has been confirmed as coefficient alpha showed a high degree reliability with a value of 0,94. The multidimensionality of the construct has also been demonstrated with 2 two-factor representing 70% of the total variance. The consumer ethnocentrism and country of origin issue have been widely studied in the literature in the past decades. The studies focused mainly on tech products or fashion leaving a gap for studies concerning food products. As far as authors are aware, no such a study has been made in the Portuguese context, concerning urban consumers. Also, it has been seen the crescent offer of retail country of origin labels and no study has been presented to evaluate how ethnocentric consumers react to it, especially on those food categories recognized as commodities