Ethnocentrism Example

Consumer Ethnocentrism: CETSCALE Validation and Measurement of Extent Anupam Bawa RESEARCH includes research articles that focus on the analysis and resolution of managerial and academic issues based on analytical and empirical or case research Executive Summary KEY WORDS Consumer Ethnocentrism Pseudopatriotism CETSCALE Consumer Behaviour Consumer ethnocentrism means ‘…the appropriateness, indeed morality of purchasing foreign made products. Today, when the Indian consumer has great access to foreign goods and the Indian manufacturer is facing increasing competition from foreign products, the neglect of this topic in India is hard to explain.

The CETSCALE, a scale to measure consumer ethnocentrism, has been tested in many parts of the world but not in India. This research examined the psychometrics of the CETSCALE, the extent of consumer ethnocentrism in India, and the relationship of socio-demographic variables and quality consciousness with consumer ethnocentrism.Data were collected from three socio-demographic groups—materials management professionals, the group with the largest influence on organizational buying behaviour; university students, the most often researched group of respondents the world over and hence ideal for a cross-cultural comparison of results; and senior secondary school students, a group recommended as worth researching by a prominent earlier researcher.

Analysis of data was done with the help of currently used and recommended tools including exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis.Results show that the concept of consumer ethnocentrism prevailing in India is not conceptually equivalent to the concept of consumer ethnocentrism prevailing in other countries where it has been found to be uni-dimensional. In India, the concept has more nuances.

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What is more, the concept as understood by the three different sociodemographic groups is also not identical. The level of consumer ethnocentrism in India is not less than that prevailing in a similar demographic group in a developed country like the US. It is the senior secondary school students who are the most consumer ethnocentric.Socio-demographic variables do not adequately explain the presence, or otherwise, of consumer ethnocentrism. Neither does quality consciousness. The managerial implications of the major findings of this study are as follows: In India, the label ‘made in India’ is not a liability. The Indian consumers will not lap up foreign goods merely because of their ‘made in’ tags. This should bring comfort to companies whose products carry the ‘made in India’ label. The threat perception of freer imports into India should be altered in the light of these findings.Foreign companies in India, planning to sell goods manufactured on Indian soil rather than imported from their plants abroad, will also get support for their actions from these findings. That the young Indians (a numerically very large segment of the market) are the most consumer ethnocentric of them all points to a comfortable future for the ‘made in India’ label. An attempt has been made to refine the CETSCALE for use in India. Marketing needs to respond to the criticism of the concept of ethnocentrism in the other social sciences.It needs to explore the relationship of consumer ethnocentrism with consumer animosity and consumer affinity (love-hate relationship with other countries). VIKALPA
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• JULY – SEPTEMBER 2004 43 43 T oday, the Indian consumer has greater and easier access to imported goods than ever before. Consequently, the Indian manufacturer has to face increasing competition from foreign goods that too on home turf. In such a scenario, it would be worthwhile to examine the attitude of Indian consumers towards the purchase of foreign-made goods.Such an examination will help the Indian manufacturers to assess the severity of the threat from imports. The Indian as well as foreign firms that wish to relocate into India or out of India can assess the opportunities or threats of such an action and can find out the extent to which the Indian consumers differ from, or are similar to, the consumers in others parts of the world with respect to preference or aversion to foreign goods. In this context, one relevant phenomenon that can be examined is ‘consumer ethnocentrism. ’ The credit for inspiring research into the phenomenon of consumer ethnocentrism goes to Shimp and Sharma (1987).They not only coined the term ‘consumer ethnocentrism’ but also gave to marketing literature the CETSCALE — a unique scale to measure consumer ethnocentrism — constructed and validated in a near textbook fashion. Researchers have investigated the psychometrics of the CETSCALE in the US, Japan, and many European countries, including the East European ones (Durvasula, Andrews and Netemeyer, 1997; Netemeyer, Durvasula and Lichtenstein, 1991; Steenkamp and Baumgartner, 1998; Luque-Martinez, Ibanez-Zapata and Barrico-Garcia, 2000; Lindquist, et al. 2001; Douglas and Nijssen, 2002). However, in India, the fifth largest economy of the world, there has been no research on the validity of the CETSCALE. Interestingly, while there are many examples of cross-cultural research carried out to test the CETSCALE, we have not come across any research study that examines the applicability of the CETSCALE to different demographic and socio-economic groups within a country. This is an intriguing omission considering that Shimp and Sharma (1987) had themselves pointed this as a direction for future research.This research effort has three broad objectives:
• To assess the validity and reliability of the CETSCALE across three socio-demographic groups in India, namely, materials management professionals, university students, and senior secondary school students.
• To compare the extent of consumer ethnocentrism prevailing in different socio-demographic groups in India with that reported in other studies carried out in different parts of the world.
• To examine the relationship of consumer ethnocentrism with various socio-demographic variables. The results of this research will also help to refine and further develop the CETSCALE.Scale construction is an important but oft-neglected step in the task of theory building. REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND HYPOTHESES Ethnocentrism means culturally-biased judgement. The origin of the concept is attributed to Summer (1906) who explained it as a feeling of superiority for one’s group and all things related to the group. Over the years, the concept has added psychological and now even economic overtones. Ethnocentrism is a concept of interest not only to sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists but also to historians, political scientists, politicians, and administrators.Consumer Ethnocentrism The best explanation of the concept is in the words of the originators of the concept (Shimp and Sharma, 1987): We use the term ‘consumer ethnocentrism’ to represent the beliefs held by American consumers about the appropriateness, indeed morality, of purchasing foreign-made products. From the perspective of ethnocentric consumers, purchasing imported products is wrong because, in their minds, it hurts the domestic economy, causes loss of jobs, and is plainly unpatriotic; products from other countries (i. e. , out groups) are objects of contempt to highly ethnocentric consumers.To non-ethnocentric consumers, however, foreign products are objects to be evaluated on their own merits without consideration for where they are made (or perhaps to be evaluated more favourably because they are manufactured outside the United States). The CETSCALE: The 17-item, seven-point CETSCALE has much to recommend it. It has been painstakingly constructed and distilled through the stages of item generation, item screening, two purification studies, and four subsequent studies conducted to examine the psychometrics of the scale.The framers of the scale, Shimp and Sharma, were able to demonstrate its reliability and validity — convergent, discriminant as well as nomoCONSUMER ETHNOCENTRISM 44 44 logical (Appendix). The CETSCALE adheres to the viewpoint that consumer ethnocentrism is a matter of ‘how ethnocentric? ’ and not ‘whether ethnocentric? ’ It does not give a consumer ethnocentric/not ethnocentric type of categorization. Rather it gives total scores ranging from 17 to 119. Lindquist et al. 2001) are of the opinion that the 17 items of the CETSCALE are linked to the following four concepts — ‘it hurts the domestic economy,’ ‘results in loss of jobs,’ ‘is unpatriotic,’ and ‘is tied to product availability,’ though Shimp and Sharma did not classify the items in this manner. There also exists a shorter 10item version of the CETSCALE (Appendix). It has been used not only by Shimp and Sharma (1987) but also by Steenkamp and Baumgartner (1998), Lindquist et al. (2001), and Douglas and Nijssen(2003). The CETSCALE has given mixed results in different parts of the world.Results from the US, Russia, Spain, France, Japan, and West Germany support the uni-dimensionality, reliability, discriminant validity, and nomological validity of the scale (Netemeyer, Durvasula and Lichtenstein, 1991; Durvasula, Andrews and Netemeyer, 1997; Luque-Martinez, Ibanez-Zapata and Barrico-Garcia, 2000). The results obtained by Lindquist et al. (2001) while working with the abridged 10-item CETSCALE in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, are ‘mixed but generally acceptable. ’ Significantly, it was found that different sub-sets of items worked in different countries.Douglas and Nijssen (2003) found that in the Netherlands, the 10-item scale was not uni-dimensional. It had a two-dimensional structure — one dimension consisting of core ethnocentrism items, the other consisting of items relating to the availability of domestic products. The predictive validity of the CETSCALE has been found to be inconsistent across product categories (Herche, 1992). Mean scores on the CETSCALE appear stable over time when the population is viewed as a whole but they are not stable for specific sub-groups (Nielsen and Spence, 1997).It is against this background that the following hypotheses have been proposed. A lack of prior research in India on the psychometrics of the CETSCALE acted as a constraint while framing the hypotheses. H1: Each of the 17 items of the CETSCALE is able to discriminate between high scorers and low scorers in each of the three socio-demographic groups sampled. H2: The CETSCALE is uni-dimensional in each of the VIKALPA
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• JULY – SEPTEMBER 2004 45 three socio-demographic groups sampled. H3: The CETSCALE has internal consistency in each of the three socio-demographic groups sampled.H4: The CETSCALE has discriminant validity with respect to related phenomena against which it is tested in each of the three socio-demographic groups sampled. H5: The CETSCALE has nomological validity with respect to each of the variables in its nomological net against which it was tested in each of the three socio-demographic groups sampled. Extent of Consumer Ethnocentrism Consumer ethnocentrism is a phenomenon of the developed world (Okechuku, 1994; La Barre, 1994; Good and Huddleston, 1995; Durvasula, Andrews and Netemeyer, 1997; Vida and Fairhurst, 1999).Consumers from less developed countries have repeatedly shown a marked preference for imported goods (Papadopoulos, Heslop and Beraes, 1990; La Barre, 1994; Agbonifoh and Eliminian, 1994; Mohammad et al. , 2000). Research that found consumers of developed countries to have no prejudice for home country products is in a minority (Johansson, Douglas and Nonaka, 1985). The Indians are generally perceived as clamouring for foreign brands (Varma, 1998). Batra et al,’s (2000) paper contains an account of literature that gives possible reasons for the average Indian’s fondness for foreign goods.These reasons include search for status symbols in the hierarchy-conscious Indian society, inferiority complex vis-a-vis the (erstwhile) foreign rulers, increased contact with the West, rising incomes, changing expectations, and cultural receptiveness to symbolism of brands. But, there exists a different strain of thought too. La Barre (1994) quoting the results of the Bozell-Gallup worldwide quality poll says: ‘India is an import receptive country but it has a healthy self image. This seeming contradiction is easy to understand when we remember that ‘in India the open mind is as much a cultural heritage as the closed mind’ (Ahmed, 1979). According to Ahmed, the ‘open mind’ of the Indian society can be gauged from the innumerable invaders of alien cultures that have been absorbed into this society; the Indian notion of hospitality that has made Indians tolerant of different cultures, languages, and religions; the lack of traits of revenge and punishment in the people, and the Indians being open not only to experiences of the world of reality 45 ut also to a separate reality. The ‘closed mind’ of the Indian society can be evidenced from, among other things, the intolerance and discrimination of lower castes, the authoritarian family structure, concern with status and power, and glorification of the past. H6: Indian respondents will be less consumer ethnocentric than comparable samples from the developed world. Consumer Ethnocentrism and Socio-demographic Variables A good review of literature has been presented by Good and Huddleston (1995) and Al-Sulaiti and Baker (1998) on this aspect of consumer ethnocentrism.Lately, Vida and Fairhurst (1999) have also examined this aspect. Regarding age, the dominant view is that the older will be more consumer ethnocentric than the younger. Regarding education, there is a near consensus that higher the education level lesser the consumer ethnocentrism. Nijssen, Douglas and Bressers (2002) feel that consumer ethnocentrism is due to lack of knowledge. The results on income are split. Shimp and Sharma (1987) had found those in the lower socio-economic group to be more ethnocentric than those higher up. They attributed this to the fear of losing jobs to foreign competitors.Regarding gender, the dominant view is that women will be more consumer ethnocentric. In addition to the variables of age, education, income, and gender, this study examined the variables of socio-economic classification of households (SEC) and quality consciousness for their relationship with consumer ethnocentrism. The SEC grade of a household is determined by the occupation and education of the head of the household (Agrawal, 1994). It helps circumvent the problems caused by the rampant misreporting of income by the respondents in India.It was hypothesized that the desire for foreign products could be a quest for quality especially as preference for foreign goods is higher in the less developed countries and more among the higher income categories. H7: The different socio-demographic groups will differ with respect to consumer ethnocentrism. The most consumer ethnocentric group will have a higher average age, least education, least average income, significantly more members from the lower SEC grades, significantly more females, and will be the least quality-conscious.The relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and socio-demographic variables is proposed to be examined not only across the three socio-demographic groups but also within each of the groups sampled by means of testing the hypothesis given below. H8: In each of the three socio-demographic groups, the more consumer ethnocentric will be the older, the less educated, from the lower income group, from the lower SEC grade, females, and the less qualityconscious. METHODOLOGY As far as possible, constructs and variables used by other researchers examining consumer ethnocentrism were used.A literal translation of the CETSCALE was used following the practice adopted by all the researchers previous to Douglas and Nijssen (2002). Pseudopatriotism and image of home country were measured to estimate divergent validity of the CETSCALE. To measure pseudopatriotism, a 14-item scale, closely following the P-Scale of Adorno et al. (1950) was developed and tested. To measure the image of home country, the relevant part of the country-of-origin scale developed by Parmeswaran and Pisharodi (1994) was used. Quality consciousness was measured with the three-item perfectionist/high quality conscious scale (Sproles and Kendall, 1986).Belief about foreign-made products and belief about products made in India were measured with two similar, four-item, seven-point scales, adapted from the scales used by Klein, Ettenson and Morris (1998) and Nijssen, Douglas and Bressers (2002). The items of each of these constructs are included in the Appendix. The validity and reliability of these ‘borrowed scales’ was tested before they were put to use (Table 1). Sample Profile The business executives most likely to influence organizational buying behaviour are material managers and hence they were chosen as one socio-demographic group of interest.The members of the Chandigarh branch of the Indian Institute of Materials Management (IIMM), a body of materials management professionals drawn largely from the industry but also including government and universities, were approached. One hundred and ninety three of the 210 members could be contacted by mail. Sixty replies were received before the cut-off date. The students of the University Business School, Panjab University, Chandigarh were the other socioCONSUMER ETHNOCENTRISM 46 46 Table 1: Reliability of the Scales Used Scale No. f Items Materials Management Professionals Coefficient n Alpha . 9471 . 7187 . 7815 . 6435 . 6618 . 8727 58 56 58 58 59 59 University Students Coefficient n Alpha . 8812 . 6411 . 7489 . 7186 . 7717 . 6857 103 104 103 104 104 104 Senior Secondary School Students Coefficient n Alpha . 8708 . 7020 . 6327 . 5703 . 5839 . 7185 175 172 178 187 181 184 CETSCALE Pseudopatriotism scale* Home country image Quality consciousness Belief about foreign products Belief about Indian products 17 9 3 4 4 Notes : Frequency totals may vary due to missing data. The number of items for materials management professionals was 11, for university students 12, and for senior secondary school students 14. See also Appendix. demographic group of interest through random sampling of students. One hundred and four filled questionnaires were obtained. Including this group in the study would facilitate comparison of findings across different research studies as students belonging to the faculties of Economics/Business Management/Commerce are the most oft-researched group of respondents in studies on consumer behaviour.The senior secondary school students were chosen as the third group of interest as no study on consumer ethnocentrism has studied this age group though Shimp and Sharma (1987) did wonder if the CETSCALE would be applicable to high school students. As government schools get the larger share of students and are popular with all income groups at the senior secondary level, the students of government senior secondary schools of the Union Territory of Chandigarh were considered. Using stratified random sampling, 188 filled questionnaires were obtained.Data were collected from November 2002 to February 2003. The profile of the sample drawn from each of the three socio-demographic groups is given in Table 2. The senior secondary school students are the socio-demographic group with the least age, education, and average income. It is the only group in which members from all the socio-economic grades are found. While there are no females in the sample of the materials management professionals, the number of males and females in the samples of the university students and the senior secondary school students does not differ significantly (X 2 = 1. 27, df=1). TESTING OF HYPOTHESES Psychometrics of the CETSCALE Hypothesis 1 relates to the discriminating power of each VIKALPA
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• JULY – SEPTEMBER 2004 47 of the 17 items of the CETSCALE. Table 3 gives, for each of the three groups, mean scores of all respondents, mean scores of the top 25 per cent scorers, and the bottom 25 per cent scorers. The difference in the mean scores obtained by the top 25 per cent scorers and bottom 25 per cent scorers were tested with the t-test. All t values were significant at . 01 level of significance. Thus, each item of the CETSCALE has discriminating power. Hypothesis 2 relates to the uni-dimensionality of the CETSCALE. As can be seen from Table 4, all the itemto-total correlations are significant in each of the three groups studied. While in the group of materials management professionals, all item-to-total correlations are above 0. 6, in the group of university students, they are above 0. 47, and in the senior secondary school students sample, they are above 0. 39. As the results of the exploratory factor analysis given in Table 5 show, the KMO values are meritorious (>0. ) for all the three groups. However, it is only in the group of materials management professionals that at 62. 779, the percentage of variance extracted exceeds the thumb rule of 0. 6 (Malhotra, 2001). The percentage of variance extracted for the university students and senior secondary school students is low at 46. 21 per cent and 38. 332 per cent respectively. As the scale is hypothesized to be uni-dimensional, all items should load highly (>0. 3 or hopefully 0. 5) on one factor. Stringent items loading retention rules are item loadings 0. , the difference between an item’s two highest loadings to be > 0. 20, at least three items to load on each factor (Tansey, Carroll and Lin Jun, 2001). On the basis of these rules, the CETSCALE cannot be declared to be uni-dimensional. There is a three-factor solution for materials man* Details can be obtained from the author. 47 Table 2: Profile of the Sample Demographic Variables Materials Management Professionals F Percentage 4 13 22 17 2 1 44. 80(59) 10. 223 4 20 34 16. 79(58) 1. 281 1 3 13 23 18 36,706. 8(54) 23,542. 4 49 7 2 60 84. 5 12. 1 3. 4 100 1. 7 5. 2 22. 4 39. 7 31. 0 6. 9 34. 5 58. 6 72 32 15. 91(107) 0. 915 9 8. 7 7 6. 7 31 29. 8 46 44. 2 11 10. 6 29,412. 385(98) 22,876. 84 64 25 1. 2 1 1 67 37 62. 1 24. 3 11. 7 1. 0 1. 0 64. 4 35. 6 33 44 43 18 29 13 4 6. 8 22. 0 37. 3 28. 8 3. 4 1. 7 University Students F Percentage 92 10 2 88. 5 9. 6 1. 9 Senior Secondary School Students F Percentage 187 1 99. 5 0. 5 – Age (Years) 15-19 20-24 25-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 70+ Mean age(n) SD Education Class 10 Class 12+ but not graduate Graduate/post-graduate general Graduate/post-graduate professional Mean no. f years of education (n) SD Household income (Rupees/pa) 0-40000(LC)* 40,001-80,000(LMC)* 80,001-1,20000(UMC)* 1,20,001-1,60,000(UMC)* 1,60,001-2,50,000(UC)* 2,50,001-5,00,000(uc)* +5,00,000(uc)* Mean income (Rs/pm)(n) SD Sec grade** 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Gender Male Female Notes: 22. 93(104) 3. 257 69. 2 30. 8 188 – 16. 56(187) 0. 922 100 10. 00(188) 0. 00 17. 9 23. 9 23. 4 9. 8 15. 8 7. 1 2. 2 9,511. 3(153) 7,579. 8 17. 4 19. 1 13. 5 5. 6 15. 2 14. 0 13. 5 1. 7 55. 3 44. 7 31 34 24 10 27 25 24 3 104 84 Frequency totals may vary due to missing data. LC – lower class, LMC – lower middle class, MC – middle class, UMC – upper middle class, UC – upper class. ** SEC grade 1 is the highest and 8 is the lowest (Agrawal, 1994). agement professionals and senior secondary school students and a four-factor solution for university students. As identification and labelling of each of the factors is not required by the hypothesis, it is not being done. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed on the CETSCALE with the objective of determining the fit of the one-factor model. Some items of the LISREL output are reported in Table 6.While using CFA, researchers are advised to report one or two indices of each of the three types of fit — absolute fit, comparative fit, and parsimonious fit (Kelloway, 1998). The rule of thumb for good fitting models are, among others, non significant chi-square results, values >0. 9 for goodness of fit index (GFI), comparative fit index (CFI), normed fit index (NFI) and non normed fit fix (NNFI), value >0. 8 or >0. 9 for adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI), value 0. 05), the RMSEAs are all 0. 9, all the coefficient alphas are >0. 8, the GFIs are >0. in the samples of university students and senior secondary school students and 0. 88 in the sample of materials management professionals. The AGFIs are all >0. 8. However, the RMSRs are higher than the norm of 0. 05, the NFIs are between 8 and 0. 9, and in the sample of university students, there is one standardized residual that is greater than 2. 58. Overall, these are fairly good single factor scales. What is more, the values of the fit indices for the modified CETSCALE given in Table 11 are far superior to the values of the fit indices for the 17-item CETSCALE given in Table 6.It is worthwhile to examine the items dropped from the CETSCALE in the different samples (Table 12). From Table 12, it is evident that a total of nine items have been dropped in one or the other sample. No item has been dropped in all the three samples. Three items have been dropped in one sample only (items 1,10, and 17) while six items have been dropped in two of the three samples (items 2,4,5,6,7, and 12). From this, it can be inferred that consumer ethnocentrism means different things to different samples. It may be pointed out that there are eight items of the CETSCALE that feature in each of the three modified scales.These items are item serial numbers 3, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, and 16 of the original 17-item CETSCALE. 53 Table 11: CFA Fit Indices for the Modified CETSCALE Scale and Fit Indices No. of items in the modified scale Items dropped 1. Chi-square 2. Degrees of freedom 3. Chi-square probability 4. Goodness of fit index (GFI) 5. Adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI) 6. Root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) 7. Root mean square residual (RMSR) 8. Comparative fit index (CFI) 9. Normed fit index (NFI) 10. Non-normed fit index (NNFI) 11. Parsimony normed fit index (PNFI) 12. Parsimony goodness of fit index (PGFI) 13.Standardized residual >2. 58 14. Coefficient alpha Materials Management Professionals 11 1,5,6,7,12,17 46. 06 44 . 39 . 88 . 82 . 00 . 21 . 99 . 89 . 99 . 71 . 59 0 . 9278 University Students 11 2,4,5,6,7,10 52. 33 44 . 18 . 92 . 88 . 033 . 16 . 97 . 83 . 96 . 66 . 61 1 . 8312 Senior Secondary School Students 14 2,4,12 96. 26 77 . 068 . 93 . 91 . 033 . 20 . 97 . 86 . 96 . 73 . 68 0 . 8575 Thus, there is a core group of items that feature in all the modified CETSCALEs. This information should be used by all the subsequent researchers working on consumer ethnocentrism in India.While in this section a modified CETSCALE has been offered for each of the three samples, the reader would do well to treat this modification exercise an exploratory exercise only. Kelloway (1998) cautions that such post hoc modifications, which are empirically generated, must be cross-validated on independent samples. DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS AND MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS In India, overall, the CETSCALE behaves just as a scale measuring consumer ethnocentrism should behave in terms of internal consistency/reliability, divergent, and nomological validity.But, the consumer ethnocentrism concept, in at least two of the three groups examined, Table 12: Items Dropped in Modified Scales Sr. No. in Brief Item Description* CETSCALE 1. 2. 4. 5. 6. 7. 10. 12. 17. Always buy Indian made products Import only unavailable products Indian products always! Purchasing foreign goods un-Indian Employment impact Real Indians buy Indian products Import only necessary items Curb all imports Employment impact is not conceptually equivalent to the concept of consumer ethnocentrism prevailing in the US and other countries where the scale was found to be uni-dimensional.In India, consumer ethnocentrism has more nuances than in the developed countries of the West. What is more, the results of EFA and the repeated CFA done to obtain better versions of the scale indicate that the concept of consumer ethnocentrism as understood by the three different socio-demographic groups studied is also not conceptually equivalent. Proceeding with the examination of CETSCORES, it was found that the Indian university students have CETSCORES comparable not only to college/university students in the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Poland but also to the US.This challenges the viewpoint that consumer ethnocentrism is a phenomenon of the developed world. All those who are prone to criticize the Indians for their ‘craze’ for foreign goods should make a special note of this finding. The Indians’ level of consumer Materials Management Professionals x** University Students x x x x x x Senior Secondary School Students x x x x x x x x * For the full wording of the item see Appendix. ** ‘x’ indicates that the item was dropped. 54 54 CONSUMER ETHNOCENTRISM ethnocentrism is not less than that prevailing in a demographically similar group in a developed country like the US.It would be wrong to view consumer ethnocentrism as a phenomenon of the developed world only. The high consumer ethnocentrism among senior secondary school students means that the ‘made in India’ tag is a valued one in the numerically very large younger segment of the Indian market. These findings should bring comfort to companies whose products carry the ‘made in India’ label. In India, this label is not a liability. The Indian consumers will not lap up foreign goods merely because of their ‘made in’ tags. The threat perception of freer imports into India should be altered in the light of these findings.Strategic decisions related to off-shore manufacturing should not be made by the Indian companies merely to get a different ‘made in’ label. Foreign companies in India planning to sell goods manufactured on Indian soil rather than imported from their plants abroad will also get support for their actions from these findings. That the young Indians (a numerically very large segment of the market) are the most consumer ethnocentric of them all points to a comfortable future for the ‘made in India’ label. Socio-demographic variables fail to adequately explain the phenomenon of consumer ethnocentrism.While two of these variables, viz. , income and SEC, are related to consumer ethnocentrism in the sample of senior secondary school students, a different variable, viz. , education, is related to consumer ethnocentrism in the sample of university students, but none of the socioAppendix: Constructs and their Items The CETSCALE 1) Indian people should always buy Indian-made products instead of imports. 2) Only those products that are unavailable in India should be imported. 3) Buy Indian-made products, keep India working. 4) Indian products, first, last, and foremost. ) Purchasing foreign made products is un-Indian. 6) It is not right to purchase foreign products because it puts Indians out of jobs. 7) A real Indian should always buy Indian-made products. 8) We should purchase products manufactured in India instead of letting other countries get rich off us. 9) It is always best to purchase Indian products. 10) There should be very little trading or purchasing of goods from other countries unless out of necessity. 11) Indians should not buy foreign products because it hurts Indian business and causes unemployment. 2) Curbs should be put on all imports. demographic variables is related to consumer ethnocentrism in the sample of materials management professionals. Even quality consciousness is not related to consumer ethnocentrism. DIRECTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH This research has been conducted in only one part of India, a vast and heterogeneous country. None of the scales used in this research had been previously tested for validity and reliability. The sampling of materials management professionals was not random.While the initial work on refining the CETSCALE for use in India has been done, this work needs to be cross-validated on other samples. There needs to be further investigation into the reasons for high consumer ethnocentrism among the school students. More attitudinal and behavioural variables should be included in further studies on consumer ethnocentrism. Last of all but not the least, marketing literature needs to pay more attention to the criticism of the concept of ethnocentrism which Levine (2001) is constrained to describe as ‘…a dated fallacy of early twentieth century social sciences. Research in the emergent area of consumer animosity (Klein, Ettenson and Morris, 1998; Nijss