Assessing the Impact of Ethnocentrism in the Food Buying Decisions of International University Students

ABSTRACT

This study assesses the influence of ethnocentrism on food buying decisions by a specific group of sojourners—namely, international university students—by distinguishing the results observed in relation to gender differences from those detected without any consideration of gender differences. On the basis of an exhaustive review of relevant literature, this study offers several research hypotheses pertaining to the influence of ethnocentrism on evaluations of alternatives, choices, and post-purchase stages. To test these hypotheses, the authors collected data from a sample of university foreign students enrolled in a Spanish university, and then submitted these data to diverse principal components factorial analyses and linear parametric regressions. The results show that a consideration of gender makes a great difference, in that the influence of ethnocentrism is much greater in the food buying decision process for male sojourners. These results have major implications for key stakeholders such as food manufacturers, importers, retailers, and universities.

KEYWORDS:

• Food products
• buying decision process
• international university students
• gender
• ethnocentrism

Funding

This research was funded by Research Project ECO2014-59688-R, Planificacion e Implementacion de Estrategias de Gestion Optimas del PDV Fisico, Online y Movil a Partir de las TIC y la Innovacion, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Spain)

Notes

¹ Studies of international students’ food buying decision processes mainly investigate phenomena such as intercultural adjustments, food acculturation (Furukawa, 1997; Hartwell et al., 2010), or changes in eating habits (Pan, Dixon, Himburg, & Huffman, 1999; Hu & Duval, 2003; Rosenthal, Russell, & Thomson, 2006). Even as we learn about some behaviors, we still do not understand how variables such as ethnocentrism influence their food purchase decisions.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by Research Project ECO2014-59688-R, Planificacion e Implementacion de Estrategias de Gestion Optimas del PDV Fisico, Online y Movil a Partir de las TIC y la Innovacion, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Spain)