The Effect of Patriotism and Consumer Ethnocentrism on Consumer Attitudes

The growth of international trade and business has contributed to the availability of various ranges of products from different national origins throughout the world. This has resulted in greater interest in examining consumer attitudes towards products of different countries. The attitude of consumers in a country surely will have an impact on the purchase intention of products from foreign countries. However, most research have been conducted in large industrialized countries such as the United States of America (US), France, Germany and Japan that have large internal markets and a wide range of domestic alternatives or brands in most product categories and little attention had been given on developing and less-developed countries. Therefore, this study attempted to identify whether the negative attitudes towards foreign made products by consumers in developing country, namely Malaysia, will have an impact on their purchase willingness and actual purchase behavior.