Does consumer ethnocentrism impact international shopping? A theory of social class divide

Abstract

Research on international shopping has the potential of elucidating collective issues such as the eminence of protectionist discourse. Concomitantly, the authors propose a Theory of Social Class Divide (SCD) that explains how the judgments of a consumer segment diverge from classical predictions. The theory received support in an international shopping context, showing that the behavior of lower-class shoppers diverges from the prediction of consumer ethnocentrism theory. In the two studies, which comprised different methods (cross-sectional and experimental), measures of social class (objective and subjective), and samples (US and Canadian), lower-class consumers were notably less affected by their ethnocentrism than upper-class consumers. Lower-class consumers generally showed, regardless of their ethnocentrism, low attitudes, and shopping intentions toward foreign retailers. The results underline the ramifications of a widening divide in social class on international marketing, and have potential implications in germane fields such as political science. © 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC