The effect of consumer xenocentrism on foreign product purchase intention through product evaluation: The moderating role of product social visibility

Consumer dispositions such as ethnocentrism and cosmopolitanism, which are effective on the desire to purchase domestic and foreign products, are insufficient to explain the reasons why consumers, especially in developing countries, choose foreign products. At this point, consumer xenocentrism gains importance as a trend that explains the preference for foreign products, which is particularly prevalent among consumers in developing countries such as ours. The aim of the study is to explain the effects of the sub-dimensions of consumer xenocentrism, perceieved inferiority and social aggrandizement, developed on the basis of the System Justification Theory, on the intention to buy foreign products and the willingness to pay more for foreign products through foreign/domestic product evaluation. In addition, the existence of a moderating role of the social visibility of the product in this relationship will be determined. The sub-objectives of the research are to determine the effect of demographic variables and cultural interaction experiences on consumers' tendency towards xenocentrism. Using the questionnaire method, 237 for household electrical products and 320 for clothing products, data were collected using convenience and snowball sampling method. As a result of the ANOVA and t-test analyses applied to the whole data, it was found that men, young people, those with low income levels, those who have not travelled, not lived abroad have higher xenocentric tendencies. PLS-SEM was used to test the models. It was observed that perceieved inferiority had a positive effect on the intention to buy foreign products in both product groups. For household electrical products, the social aggrandizement was found to have a positive effect on willingness to pay more for foreign products, while the effect of the perceieved inferiority was significantly different for clothing products. For household electrical products, the moderating role of the social visibility of the product in the relationship between the perceieved inferiority and the willingness to purchase foreign products is statistically significant, but there is no difference for clothing products.