Consumer racism: a scale modification
Purpose – Consumer racism describes the act of purchase discrimination based on ethnic and/or cultural differences. As the original consumer racism scale was developed based on a Western context and environment, most of its items may be unsuitable for use in certain non-Western countries. This pa...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
Emerald Publishing
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://irep.iium.edu.my/61138/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/61138/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/61138/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/61138/1/Consumer%20racism%20a%20scale%20modification.pdf http://irep.iium.edu.my/61138/7/61138_Consumer%20racism_scopus.pdf |
| Summary: | Purpose – Consumer racism describes the act of purchase discrimination based on ethnic and/or
cultural differences. As the original consumer racism scale was developed based on a Western
context and environment, most of its items may be unsuitable for use in certain non-Western
countries. This paper aims to modify the existing consumer racism scale to include the elements
of inter-ethnic relationships, historical occurrences and political situations, which are crucial in
shaping and influencing racism in a multi-religion and multi-racial context.
Design/methodology/approach – After generating new items and retaining or removing others
for a modified consumer racism scale, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed based on
145 respondents followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) based on 176 respondents. The
modified scale, including two other related constructs (consumer ethnocentrism and consumer
animosity), was then tested through structural equation modeling (SEM) using WarpPLS 5.0 and
data from 495 respondents.
Findings – EFA and CFA results suggest that the modified 8-item consumer racism scale is
applicable in a multi-ethnic scenario. However, SEM findings contradict previous studies; thus,
discussion of the possible effects of consumer racism is based on two different approaches.
Research limitations/implications – Future research could be expanded into other ethnic groups
and countries, and/or to different products, categories and brands.
Originality/value – The main contributions of this study are the validation of the modified
measurement scale and demonstration of its applicability in a multi-ethnic scenario. The study is
based on data from a multi-ethnic, multi-religion and multi-cultural country: Malaysia.
Keywords: Consumer racism, scale modification, consumer ethnocentrism, consumer animosity,
Malaysia, ethnic Malays, ethnic Chinese
Paper type: Research paper |
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