Consumers’ Willingness to Buy Foreign Products: Effects of Consumer Animosity and Ethnocentrism

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of animosity on consumer’s willingness to buy foreign products. Animosity can be a vital force to decide whether to buy a foreign product or not.  This research paper is about measuring and quantifying the animosity of people of china towards Japanese products in general. Additionally, it is quite evident from previous researches, that people of china have a special grudge against Japanese, after world war II. Previous studies in this regard were conducted in one or few cities of china, this research aimed to collect data from multiple cities, in order to generalize the concept.  To discuss in detail, whether people from different parts of china consider this animosity against Japanese products or not. In addition, this study also highlighted a new construct i.e. perceived quality. What will happen if a Chinese consumer have to decide between animosity and better quality of Japanese product?  To conduct this investigation, the study is undertaken in China where the Chinese consumers’ animosity towards the Japanese was examined. The data with a usable sample size of 435 were collected in the Chinese city of Nanjing.  Findings of the study revealed that, people in china still have high level of animosity towards Japanese products. And even at times, products with high quality are being ignored because of its Japanese background. Most important and consistent to current literature, results showed that, consumer animosity as a higher order construct which is indicated by economic animosity and war animosity.  Those parts of china where we found an extreme animosity, ethnocentrism couldn’t play a significant role to affect the other constructs in the animosity model. Animosity can be a result of any event or mishap, but will it stay the same after so many years? irrespective of the quality of product, this is what, this paper tends to highlight.