The research topic we have chosen to conduct in this research is "Antecedents and Consequences of Consumer Ethnocentrism towards the Japanese Store". The purpose of this research study is to examine and investigate whether consumer ethnocentrism will influence purchase intention through the mediating role of attitude toward foreign products in Japanese convenience stores.
RESEARCH OVERVIEW
- Research Background
- Problem Statement
- Research Questions
- Research Objectives
- General Objective
- Specific Objectives
- Hypotheses of the study
- Significance of Study
- Chapter Layout
- Conclusion
In addition, there is a lack of study done to study about consumer ethnocentrism on attitude towards Japanese convenience store in Malaysia. In addition, the investigation of whether there is a purchase intention of the consumer towards Japanese convenience store.
LITERATURE REVIEW
- Review of the Literature
- Patriotism
- Cultural Openness
- Conservatism
- Consumer Ethnocentrism
- Attitude towards Foreign Products
- Purchase Intention
- Review of Relevant Framework
- Proposed Theoretical/ Conceptual Framework
- Hypotheses Development
- The Relationship between Patriotism and
- The Relationship between Cultural Openness
- The Relationship between Conservatism
- The Relationship between Consumer
- The Relationship between Consumer
- The Relationship between Attitude towards
- The Mediating Role of Attitude towards
- Conclusion
According to Shankarmahesh's (2006) conceptual model, there is a negative relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention of foreign products. H7: Attitude towards foreign products mediates the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention of foreign products.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research Design
- Quantitative Research
- Descriptive Research
Descriptive research design is adopted in this study where it is able to explain the characteristics of the target respondents and is suitable to study the larger population (Burns & Bush, 2009). For example, questions such as age, gender, income and so on are used to describe the characteristics of respondents in this study.
Data Collection Methods
- Primary Data
- Secondary Data
Therefore, the collected data will be presented in numerical form and the analysis will use the statistically based method in this study. In addition, primary data are collected in this research to gather information about specific research problems to help the researcher adopt the research method that matches the specific research problems in this study (Hox & Boejie, 2005). In other words, these types of data are original and first-hand data that are collected for the specific research problem, so they are useful for current and future studies as the primary data has not been altered by human beings.
In addition, the framework and hypotheses of this study are formed after reviewing the previous studies done by the other studies. Therefore, the framework and hypotheses formed in this study are supported by previous studies.
Sampling Design
- Target Population
- Sampling Frame and Sampling Location…
- Sampling Elements
- Sampling Technique
- Sampling Size
The sampling element of this research is 250 respondents who are Malaysian and bought products from any Japanese convenience store in Malaysia. The researchers used this sampling technique to randomly select the respondents so that the respondents have an equal chance of being selected (Stephanie, 2015). This technique is the easy, cheap and time-saving method of distributing the questionnaire by selecting only the respondents who are convenient and easy to obtain (Zikmund, 2003).
After collecting data from the distributed questionnaires, the researchers screen and filter out those respondents who do not meet the criteria of this study. 7 out of 265 sets of respondents which is 2.64% are discarded as the respondents do not meet the first filter question (Are you Malaysian?), 3 out of 265 sets of questionnaires which is 1.13% are discarded as the respondents is not satisfied with other filter question (Do you know any Japanese convenience store in Malaysia?), and finally, 5 out of 265 sets of questionnaires, which is 1.89%, are removed because the respondents have not purchased products from Japanese convenience stores in Malaysia before.
Research Instrument
- Questionnaire Design
- Pilot Test & Pre-Test
In order to ensure high reliability and validity of the questionnaire, pre-testing was carried out in this study. The definition of face validity refers to "researchers" subjective assessments of the presentation and relevance of the measuring instrument as to whether the items in the instrument appear to be relevant, reasonable, unambiguous and clear. Five experts commented on the minor errors related to grammar, wording and sentence of the questionnaire, as well as major errors such as double-ended questions so that the researchers could modify the minor and major errors according to their comments.
Cronbach's Alpha value is considered reliable and good if the value is more than 0.7 (Tavakol & Dennick, 2011). The result of the pilot test reached an overall mean value of 0.8715, indicating that there is a high reliability in the Cronbach's Alpha reliability test for each of the constructs.
Scale of Measurement
- Ordinal Scale
- Nominal Scale
- Likert Scale
When there is no significant relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention, this indicates full mediation of attitude towards foreign products. In this study, the negative relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and attitude towards foreign products is consistent with previous studies such as Van den Berg (2017), Ramadania, Gunawan and Rustam (2015) and Kumar, Fairhurst and Kim (2011). The insignificant relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention is similarly found in other studies by Nguyen (2017), Balabanis and Siamagka (2017) and Van den Berg (2017).
Attitude towards foreign products plays an important mediating role between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention in this study. Previous studies such as Salman and Naeem (2015), Juharsah and Hartini (2014) and Van den Berg (2017) show that there is partial mediation of attitude towards foreign products on consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention. This is because there is a negative correlation between consumer ethnocentrism and attitudes towards foreign products.
In addition, it is also found that there is no relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention.
Construct Measurement (Scale and Operations
Data Processing
- Checking
- Editing
- Coding
- Transcription
- Cleaning
Data modification and correction action will be taken if any error is found to exist. Another situation is that the collected data will be rejected when the answers are found to be irrelevant and incomplete. In short, this ensures that the data will be accurate, reliable, complete and consistent.
The questionnaire data will be crucial in Excel sheets or tables for easier interpretation. SPSS will be used to check the data consistency and remove the out-of-range values.
Data Analysis
- Descriptive Analysis
- Reliability Test
- Multicollinearity
- Inferential Analysis
- Multiple Regression Analysis
- Mediation Effect
It is also mentioned by Paul (2006) where multicollinearity problem will not exist if the VIF is less than 5 or 10. According to Gogtay, Deshpande and Thatte (2017) Multiple Regression Analysis (MRA) is used when there are more than two independent variables and one continuous dependent variable. In addition, it is also stated that the linear relationship exists between independent variables and dependent variable, which means that any changes in the independent variables will affect the dependent variable.
Thus, it can be said that it is to explain the relationship between independent variables and dependent variables. It is an analysis that is conducted to run out the mediator variable test to know the mediation effect of the mediator.
Conclusion
To know whether it is significant or not, the indirect effect value must be between the bootstrap confidence interval and not include zero.
Introduction
Final Sample Size
Descriptive Analysis
- Respondents’ Profile
- Respondent Demographic Profile
- Central Tendencies Measurement
Regarding the level of education, the statistics show that most of the respondents have earned a Bachelor's degree. Moreover, most of the respondents have RM3000 and above monthly income which accounted for 60.8%. The researchers found that most of the respondents have middle or high income level.
In addition, respondents generally have a moderately low level of consumer ethnocentrism, with the level of consumer ethnocentrism reaching a mean of 2.79 and a standard deviation of 0.85. Thus, respondents generally have a moderately high positive attitude towards products from Japanese stores.
Scale of Measurement
- Reliability Test (Cronbach’s Alpha)
- Multicollinearity
The remaining variables such as conservatism, cultural openness, consumer ethnocentrism and attitude towards foreign products are within a very good internal consistency (>0.8). Overall, consumer ethnocentrism is associated with purchase intention with as high as -.172 mediating effect of attitude towards foreign products. Based on table 5.1, the results (t-value = -3.739, p-value = 0.000) show that the p-value is lower than the significant level of 0.05, so there is a significant relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and attitude towards foreign products .
This is because this study found that there is an insignificant relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intent, which is similar to previous studies such as Nguyen (2017), Balabanis and Siamagka (2017) and Van den Berg (2017), as argued in H5. Subsequently, the results and findings of previous studies also supported that there is no significant relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention.
Inferential Analysis
- Multiple Regression Analysis
Attitude towards Foreign Product as Mediator
Conclusion
As according to the results of the analysis in SPSS, descriptive analysis, measurement scale, inferential analysis and summary of overall hypothesis results of the study are explained precisely. Therefore, continuing with the fully explained chapter 4 findings, the final chapter of this study can discuss the main findings, implications of the study, limitations as well as the recommendations for future research of the study.
DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION
Discussion of Major Findings
The result of both studies mentioned that conservatism has no significant relationship with consumer ethnocentrism. Specifically, this study enables the government to know about the consumer ethnocentrism of Malaysian citizens and its antecedents. However, in the context of convenience stores, consumer ethnocentrism is low despite high patriotism, as Malaysian consumers develop favorable attitudes toward foreign convenience stores.
Effects of consumer ethnocentrism and country of origin on Polish consumers' evaluation of foreign-made products. Consumer ethnocentrism and attitudes towards foreign beer brands: With evidence from the Zlin Region in the Czech Republic.
Implication of study
- Managerial Implications
- Policy-Maker Implication
Limitations of the study
In conclusion, the inclusion of only three antecedents is not powerful enough to measure consumer ethnocentrism and results in a low R-squared value in this study. Second, it is recommended that future research may include other variables not used in this study to measure consumer ethnocentrism. Consequently, future research can demonstrate whether different countries have different consequences of consumer ethnocentrism.
Contradictions in the behavioral effects of consumer ethnocentrism: The role of brand, product category, and country of origin. Consumer ethnocentrism measurement - An assessment of the reliability and validity of the CETSCALE in Spain. Effects of Republic of Serbia citizens' patriotism and hostility toward the European Union on consumer ethnocentrism.
The impact of consumer ethnocentrism on domestic brand value in the Lithuanian fresh meat market (dissertation).
Recommendation for future research
Conclusion
In addition, there was sufficient evidence to support that consumer ethnocentrism is related to attitude toward foreign products and that attitude toward foreign products is related to purchase intention. Moreover, foreign product attitude was also found to have full mediating effect between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention, which indicates that the mediating effect is reliable for each other in this study. In conclusion, this research project has achieved the problem statement and research objective, which identifies the antecedents and outcome of consumer ethnocentrism and all the relationships between the variables.
Cultural identity and consumer ethnocentrism influence preference and purchase of domestic versus import brands: An empirical study in China. Assessing the effects of self-congruity, attitudes. satisfaction for the purposes of customer behavior in the retail environment. 2013), Consumer ethnocentrism and its antecedents: An exploratory study of consumers in India. Measuring the effect of consumer ethnocentrism and consumer beliefs about herbal products on brand loyalty: a study of the Indian FMCG sector.
The purpose of this research is to examine the antecedents of consumer ethnocentrism and whether the outcomes of consumer ethnocentrism will influence consumer attitudes toward foreign products.
