The Effects of Consumer Cosmopolitanism on Purchase Behavior of Foreign vs. Domestic Products

The purpose of this empirical study is to investigate the effects of consumercosmopolitanism on foreign product purchase behavior in threemajor categories of consumer products (alcohol products, clothes, furniture).Based on the existing theoretical and empirical knowledge, wedevelop a conceptual model and identify two additional constructs asantecedents of foreign purchase behavior, i. e., consumer ethnocentrismand consumer knowledge of brand origins. The measurementmodel is examined using a data set of 261 adult consumers and testedvia structural equation modeling. The study results confirm the strongtotal effect of consumer cosmopolitanism in purchase behavior andindicate a strong direct effect of this phenomenon on the behavioraloutcome. The more cosmopolitan consumers have a stronger tendencyto buy foreign rather than local products. On the other hand, the directrelationship between cosmopolitanism and consumer knowledgeof brand origin was not supported in the study.