Scale development for consumer repulsion: A consumers' individual identity-expressiveness perspective

Area of Science:

• Consumer behavior
• Marketing psychology
• Emerging market studies

Background:

• Emerging markets see native consumers preferring foreign over domestic products.
• Limited research exists on unfavorable attitudes toward one's own country's products.
• Consumer repulsion is a key factor influencing these attitudes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a construct and measurement scale for consumer repulsion.
• To explore the relationship between consumer repulsion, domestic product ownership, and negative word-of-mouth.
• To propose a three-dimensional model of consumer repulsion (affective, cognitive, conative).

Main Methods:

• Scale development and validation using responses from 318 Chinese consumers.
• Judgment sampling for representative age and gender distributions.
• Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, validity testing (content, convergent, discriminant, nomological).

Main Results:

• A reliable and valid scale for consumer repulsion was developed.
• Consumer repulsion demonstrated affective, cognitive, and conative dimensions.
• Linking domestic products to social and self-identity influences ownership and word-of-mouth.

Conclusions:

• Consumer repulsion explains native consumers' negative attitudes toward domestic products from an identity-expressiveness perspective.
• The developed scale enhances understanding of country biases and expands existing research.
• Findings suggest strategies to improve domestic product perception by connecting them to consumer identity.