Diversity in gender and age, but not in race, enhances food purchase intentions in Japan

Abstract

Team diversity must be promoted in many societies. While prior studies have emphasized the consequential impact of diverse teams on businesses, particularly in Western countries known for their racial and gender diversity, there is a notable gap in research exploring the role of team diversity on consumer evaluations among non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) consumers. Drawing upon signaling theory, our research aimed to investigate the influence of team diversity on consumer evaluations of both typical and novel food products within the non-WEIRD context of Japanese consumers. Japan, with its relatively low diversity in terms of gender and cultural ethnicity compared with North American and European countries, offers a unique background for exploring diversity issues. Through three online studies, we examined the impact of team ethnic diversity (Studies 1 and 2) and team age/gender diversity (Study 3) on purchase intentions toward typical and novel products. Our findings reveal that in Japan, information about gender and age diversity positively influences the purchase intention of food products, regardless of the novelty of the product. Notably, no such effect was observed for racial diversity. These results suggest that the positive influence of gender and age, but not racial diversity, can be generalized to non-WEIRD Japanese samples, contributing valuable insights into understanding team diversity dynamics in consumers’ evaluations of purchase intentions.