The effect of consumers’ ethnocentric attitudes on their willingness for prosumption

Abstract

The article aims to define the role of the ethnocentric attitude of purchasers in their integration with offerors through prosumption. It is of a theoretical and empirical nature. For the theoretical aspect, the literature on marketing, consumer behaviour, etc., was cognitively and critically analysed. For the empirical aspect, a questionnaire was used to gather primary data, and statistical analysis (including factor analysis and the chi-square test) was conducted on the questionnaire results. The results of the empirical research showed that respondents could be divided into three groups. One group exclusively included people who showed willingness for active participation in the creation of a marketing offer for native products. This was the most homogenous group. The other two groups contained respondents who did not show willingness for prosumption. The article is original because it uses quite a new approach of analysing the importance of ethnocentric attitudes for purchasers’ willingness for prosumption. Prior to this article, prosumption and ethnocentrism had not been analysed together.

1. Introduction

Present-day consumers are more and more demanding (Lee et al., 2014) and very diversified. Their lifestyles are so different that one could even say that they are individualised. This is reflected in their market behaviours, including purchase behaviours. It also affects their attitudes, including the way that they perceive particular offerors, products, etc (Manning, 2015). Despite their differences, there are some consumer behaviours that display common or similar features. These features create what are known as consumer trends, which have been analysed by, inter alia, B. Mróz (2014) and R. Passikoff (2014). The consumer trends gaining greater significance include prosumption (Alderete, 2017; Lebiejko, 2011) and ethnocentrism (Sharma, 2015; Adamczyk et al., 2015). This is due to, inter alia, the growing market awareness of purchasers and their willingness to make an active impact on the surrounding world, and the current social phenomena connected with the mass migration of people, noticed especially in Europe. Prosumption consists of the active inclusion of purchasers in the process of creating a marketing offer (Ritzer et al., 2012). Ethnocentrism, in turn, is connected with the preference for one's own national culture and products (Maison, Maliszewski, 2016; Wang, Chen, 2004). Obviously, the intensity of ethnocentric attitudes can vary, yet one's own country and the products manufactured and offered by offerors from this country are always considered by ethnocentric- oriented purchasers to be better than others (Chen, 2009; Bizumic, 2014; Sharma et al., 1995).

A cognitive and critical analysis of the literature on prosumption and ethnocentrism shows that these two trends are analysed as independent phenomena. Up until now, no attempts to analyse mutual dependencies between the trends have been made. Moreover, both trends are analysed in relation to purchaser characteristics, especially demographic characteristics. In the case of ethnocentrism, studies have been conducted by, inter alia, Szromnik and Wolanin-Jarosz (2013), Wanninayake and Chovancová (2012), Hainmueller and Hiscox (2007), and Coenders and Scheepers (2003).

The coexistence of various global trends and sub-trends has been discussed in the literature, and it is determined that co-existence is a feature of consumer trends. Nevertheless, these discussions are of a general nature. They do not concern mutual relations between market phenomena. Moreover, it should be added that both prosumption and ethnocentrism are not analysed in terms of their integration. A final purchaser playing the role of a prosumer, regardless of whether their behaviour is ethnocentric or not, is an active participant of a marketing channel. The activities of offerors that tend to result in prosumption and/or result from a spontaneous initiative raised by the purchasers themselves create a marketing partnership between purchasers and offerors. This is tantamount to an increase in the level of integration between a producer and a purchaser (if he/she participates in the marketing activities of the producer) or between a retailer and a purchaser (if he/she participates in the marketing activities of the retailer).

This article aims to determine the role of the ethnocentric attitude of purchasers in their integration with offerors through prosumption. In order to do this, three research hypotheses are tested. These hypotheses concern the mutual dependencies between ethnocentrism and prosumption.

The article contains both theoretical and empirical aspects. It consists of the following sections: introduction, literature review, research goals and hypotheses, general characteristics of empirical studies, research results, discussion, conclusions and practical and social implications, managerial implications and limitations of the study and the directions of future research.

2. Background

Based on a cognitive- and -critical analysis of the literature, one can state that there are two basic approaches to prosumption. Some authors talk about prosumption only when products exist due to cooperation between producers and purchasers (Ritzer et al., 2012; Tapscott, 2008). Other researchers apply a much wider approach, and consider that prosumption includes the preparation of products for one's own needs, without the participation of a producer (Mitręga, 2013). The author of this article does not consider this approach to be right. Prosumption requires an indirect or direct relationship between an offeror and a purchaser as a prosumer. Only then can one talk about a particular level of integration between them. Purchasers preparing products on their own prevent mutual relationships from being built. This also does not involve integration between participants of a marketing channel. Therefore, this cannot be treated as a form of prosumption.

Prosumption defined as the co-creation of marketing values by consumers and offerors or other users is related to service-dominant logic (SDL). In the literature, SLD is considered the framework or even paradigmatic lens for the creation of values (Wilden et al., 2017) including prosumption. SDL is the opposite to good-dominant logic (GDL) and has become the main approach in contemporary marketing (Vargo and Lusch, 2008), one that is concerned about common activities and their effects.

Alongside prosumption, one of the key consumer trends is ethnocentrism (Bjørndal et al., 2014; Zalega, 2017). Consumer ethnocentrism is directly connected to attitudes towards foreign and domestic products, offerors, etc. These attitudes can be negative or positive. For example, some authors write about individual attitudes such as xenophobia and conservatism which are rather negative feelings (Altintaş and Tokol, 2007) and consider them as the main reasons behind ethnocentrism. However, there are many studies showing that consumer ethnocentrism results from positive emotions and feelings like social responsibility (Misra et al., 2018), patriotism (Pentz et al., 2017; Cazacu, 2016), willingness to support domestic offerors (Quang et al., 2017), etc.

When analysing the views of various researchers, an element common to both prosumption and ethnocentrism can be noticed. Some authors find the endeavour to achieve non-measurable benefits such as the creation of one's own image and the expression of one's own personality (Coupland, 2005; Schau and Mary, 2003) or the feeling of belonging to a given society and its tradition (Troye, Xie) to be one of the reasons why a contemporary purchaser takes on the role of a prosumer. In the opinion of this author, the endeavour to highlight one's membership in a particular society is also directly connected with ethnocentric aspects. Therefore, it indicates the necessity to analyse the ethnocentric dimension of prosumption in the context of integration between offerors and purchasers.

In the opinion of the author of this article, the prosumptive behaviours of contemporary purchasers are shown in their engagement in the preparation of the following:

• 1)offers from various enterprises regardless of their origin;
• 2)
  offers exclusively or mainly from a particular country of origin:

  • a.
    native,
  • b.
    other than native.

In the first case, prosumption is not ethnocentric, as it is not affected by the origin of the enterprise. In this case, the reasons for prosumption are extra-patriotic or over-patriotic and can include purchasers’ willingness to share marketing potential with offerors, willingness to achieve measurable or non-measurable equivalents for their work in creating an offer, willingness to be noticed, etc. Some authors consider even exhibitionism to be a reason for prosumptive behaviour (Hearn, 2014). However, among the stimuli which prompt purchasers to become active on the market, one does not find national reasons reflecting a strong emotional bond with their own country.

In the second case, purchasers' engagement exclusively concerns offers from a particular country. The prime motivator of prosumption can first of all be patriotism (as far as one's own country is concerned) or anti-patriotism (as far as another country is concerned; it could be a particular country or many countries besides the native one). In the case of co-creating native offers, patriotism is reflected not only in the endeavour to support one's own country and native offerors, but also the willingness to highlight one's membership in a particular social or national group and to manifest one's identity with it (Verlegh, 2007).

Inclusion in the process of creating native offers is usually relatively better-thought-out and more intentional than inclusion in creating non-native offers. It could even have a long-term perspective (for example, when somebody is willing to support his/her country's economy).

The prosumptive behaviours listed above distinguish between the co-creation of native offers and prosumption which does not result from national reasons. It is worth adding that some authors even claim that prosumers fulfil this role without being aware of this fact (inter alia, Ind and Coates (2013); Hippel et al. (2011)). However, in the opinion of the author of this paper, the role of a prosumer fulfilled in an entirely unconscious way does not comply with the current definition of the term. The main features of a prosumer are ‘awareness of being a key participant of the contemporary market’ (inter alia, Rieder and Voß, 2010) and ‘being an innovative participant of this market’ (Zalega, 2016; Baldwin and von Hippel, 2011). Prosumer behaviour is based on eagerness to share marketing potential with other market participants, including purchasers and offerors. This potential is composed of knowledge, experiences, etc. Sharing knowledge with the offeror (Ziemba and Eisenbardt, 2014) leads to creating value not only for the enterprise but also for the prosumer.

Nevertheless, both cases of prosumptive behaviour mentioned above are similar as they can take place both in the virtual environment and the real world, and can also occur in both areas at the same time. Therefore, it becomes difficult to agree with the opinion of researchers who limit the scope of prosumptive engagement exclusively to the internet. This means that there are digital prosumers (Rayna and Striukova, 2016; Dusi, 2016), non-digital prosumers and prosumers functioning in both environments.

Regardless of the role that current or potential prosumers fulfil, purchasers are the participants of certain marketing channels. They can participate in various channels at the same time (Verhoef et al., 2007; Ansari et al., 2008) and become active subjects of a multi-channelled marketing environment. In the literature, a marketing channel is defined as a set of entities engaged in the process of creating products that are afterwards available for consumption (Coughlan et al., 2006). Thus, the definition separates the sphere of consumption. However, according to the assumptions of prosumption, which is treated as the co-creation (Shen and Wei, 2016; Tian et al., 2017) of an offer by offerors and purchasers (including external and internal ones (Baruk, 2017)), consumption is a key element of a marketing channel, as it is strictly connected to the process of creation. It can also be assumed that purchasers are participants of a marketing channel even if the scope of their activity is limited to purchase behaviour, which is due to the increasing level of their market awareness (Szmigin et al., 2009), etc.

Marketing channels are characterised by a different level of internal integration (Singh and Power, 2009), which determines the way the whole channel works. Taking the previous discussion into account, in the author's opinion, it is worth analysing the significance of ethnocentrism in the way that purchasers express their readiness for prosumption. Obviously, knowledge of mutual dependencies between ethnocentrism and prosumption would facilitate offerors' and purchasers' integration within behavioural marketing (taking into consideration the position they have in the marketing chain) and emotional marketing (taking into consideration psychological aspects). An increase in the level of integration in the first dimension positively influences integration in the second dimension. Offerors and purchasers who cooperate more closely and achieve mutually defined measurable and non-measurable benefits notice that these benefits are greater than they are when there is a lack of such cooperation (Brabham, 2012; Ziemba and Eisenbardt, 2015).

Close cooperation facilitates psychological changes to take place and offerors and purchasers are able to consider one another as partners, i.e. equal creators of marketing values that are beneficial to both parties. In order to achieve this, ethical rules from all participants in the marketing channel must be obeyed. The role of ethics is highlighted by numerous authors (inter alia Ferrell et al., 2013; Ferrell and Ferrell, 2016). Ethics is definitely the basis for building and strengthening good mutual relations over a long period of time. The relational dimension of intra-channel integration is also highlighted as vital (inter alia, Palmatier et al., 2015; Wagner et al., 2011; Hastings et al., 2016), which proves that the degree of integration between purchasers and offerors can be determined by analysing the character of the relationship between these two parties.

Although the literature deals with integration in marketing channels mainly in terms of participants (inter alia Kumar, 2005; Zhao et al., 2008; Coughlan et al., 2006), psychological aspects are equally significant, especially nowadays. It is essential to notice the necessity for dealing with purchasers with responsibility, the lack of which negatively influences mutual relations and, consequently, the level of integration between purchasers and offerors. Responsibility towards purchasers is obviously important for all contemporary offerors; however, it is particularly significant for offerors of food products (Manning, 2013; Belaya and Hanf, 2009), due to the specificity of those products and the fact that they are purchased by every person and are the main product that people buy.

It could be asked, whether ethnocentrism influences prosumption and whether prosumption has, in turn, an impact on the level of integration between offerors and purchasers. In other words, are the relationships between offerors and purchasers a pillar of contemporary marketing, including the marketing of food products? The answer to this question requires multi-stage academic research.

3. Hypothesis

Cognitive and critical analysis of the literature indicates that issues connected with the role of ethnocentrism in purchasers’ willingness to be prosumers have not been studied up until now. This includes ethnocentrism related to food products and their marketing attributes. The issues have not been analysed in the context of integration, either. Due to the lack of analyses concerning dependencies between prosumption and ethnocentrism, the present article aims to achieve the following research goals:

G1

- to identify respondents' opinions concerning marketing offers available on the food market;

G2

- to group respondents based on their opinions regarding their willingness for prosumption,

G3

- to define the role of ethnocentrism in the willingness for prosumption and the dependence between them.

So far, both ethnocentrism and prosumption have been analysed separately, and attempts have been made to define their various determinants, such as demographic ones. For example, Szromnik and Wolanin-Jarosz (2013) analysed the demographic determinants of consumer ethnocentrism, but in their studies they did not consider the possible relationship between this trend and prosumption. Demographic determinants were also analysed by other researchers with reference to the general level of ethnocentrism or, in the case of ethnocentric attitudes and behaviours, to a particular group of products (Wanninayake and Chovancová, 2012). Ethnocentrism as a preferences for domestic products was studied by Vida and Reardon (2008); Ferrín (2015), etc. This preference was analysed mainly in relation to purchase attitudes and behaviours (Josiassen et al., 2011; He and Wang, 2015; Shoham and Gavish, 2016), but not in relation to the other types of market attitudes and behaviours.

Ethnocentrism and the country-of-origin or region-of-origin effect were analysed with reference to food as a group of products or a particular food product by Chamorro et al. (2015); Ozimek and Żakowska- Biemans (2011); Kashif et al. (2015); and Bianchi and Mortimer (2015).

Prosumption was the subject of works by Chandler and Chen (2015); Seran (Potra) and Izvercian (2014); Fox (2012); Galvagno and Dalli (2014); Carrington and Neville (2016), Witell et al. (2011); Ziemba and Eisenbardt (2015); and Ritzer and Jurgenson (2010). However, those authors analysed this phenomenon without reference to ethnocentrism. They considered ethnocentrism at most against the background of similar phenomena such as co-creation and do-it-yourself. There is thus a visible cognitive and research in this area.

In order to start to fill this gap, the author of this text empirically verified the following research hypotheses:

H1

– respondents who express prosumptive willingness towards Polish food offers also express prosumptive willingness towards offers from other countries;

H2

– respondents' opinions mainly concern native offers on the native market;

H3

– there is a dependence between prosumptive willingness and the attitudes of ethnocentric respondents.

4. Methodology

The research process of this article was divided into two main stages: cognitive and critical analysis of existing literature (conducted according to the approach suggested by Levy and Ellis (2006) and by Webster and Watson (2002)) and empirical research. The second stage was composed of the following four phases: interviews to prepare research questions, gathering primary data through a questionnaire to identify respondents’ opinions towards marketing offers, statistical analysis to find the relationship between ethnocentrism and prosumption, and drawing conclusions and proposing implications.

The empirical research for this article involved the use of a questionnaire for gathering primary data. This was given to 460 Polish adult final purchasers chosen by means of non-random sampling (purposive sampling). Purposive sampling was used as many authorities in statistics argue that random sampling is overstated and is not useful for each research process (Szreder, 2010), and because purposive sampling is useful for obtaining data from different groups of people. Data gathered using this kind of sampling are considered to be more representative of the population than those achieved with an alternative form of sampling (Patton, 2002). The minimum sample size was defined as 384 (Nowak, 2007), which was calculated at confidence level α = 0.95 and maximum error 5% for the whole population of adult Poles (30.5 million; Population. Size and structure: http://www.polskawliczbach.pl/#ixzz4F3Nogl1N). A larger number of respondents than the minimum sample size was used for the questionnaire to ensure that this minimum sample size would be met.

The questionnaire was of a direct nature, which required personal contact between the interviewer and the respondents. Due to this, the questionnaire could not be completed over the internet. This resulted in a high rate of return, 94%. The questionnaire, which was conducted in 2015, was preceded by non-structured interviews with fifty persons. These interviews, together with the results of the cognitive and critical analysis of the literature, formed the basis for a set of 19 statements related to food products which formed the questionnaire.

The questionnaire given to the respondents was created especially for the needs of this study. Nobody used the same or similar research instrument before. The internal structure, composition, etc. of the statements in the questionnaire were written in the author's style and were applied in the research process for the first time. No similar statements previously existed due to the mentioned lack of research on mutual relationships between ethnocentrism and prosumption.

For example, the most well known instrument used in research on ethnocentrism is the CETSCALE (Consumer Ethnocentric Tendencies Scale), which is composed of 17 items and was created by Shimp and Sharma (1987). It does not allow for the study of the relationship between ethnocentrism and prosumption. Research on ethnocentrism conducted by other authors, including the researchers listed in the previous part of this article, has the same limitation. For example, the SCONET research instrument proposed by Maison and Baran (2014) is composed of seven items that enables the study of ethnocentrism only.

The study of prosumption also does not consider its relationship with ethnocentrism. This phenomenon is analysed, inter alia, in the context of consumers’ virtual activity (e.g. Ritzer and Jurgenson (2010); Collins (2010); Li (2011) etc.) and in terms of consumers activity (e.g. Izvercian et al. (2013)).

The lack of previous studies that include questions which could be adopted for this research process was the reason why a completely new questionnaire had to be created for this study.

To prepare the statements for identifying opinions towards marketing offers in order to show the relationship between ethnocentrism and prosumption, interviews were conducted. The results of these interviews enabled the creation of 19 statements that were used in the questionnaire in the next stage of the research process. The 19 statements chosen for the questionnaire reflected opinions repeated the most often by the interviewees. These statements had to be ranked by respondents on 5-grade Likert scale, where 1 indicated definitely not, 2 – rather not, 3 – neither yes, nor no, 4 – rather yes and 5 – definitely yes. Applying the Likert scale enables exploratory factor analysis to be conducted.

431 completed questionnaires qualified for statistical analysis. This analysis consisted of exploratory factor analysis and the chi-square test. Factor analysis was used in order to reduce the number of variables influencing the category studied (i.e. respondents’ opinions related to a marketing offer) and to reveal the internal hidden dependencies in the relationships between those variables. To extract the factors, a principal component method was used. To determine the number of common factors, the Kaiser Criterion was applied. The rotation of factors was carried out using the standardized varimax method. Within the factors, variables with the highest factorial loadings against particular factors (>0.7) were distinguished (Abdi and Williams, 2010). After applying factor analysis the chi-square test was used. This allowed research hypothesis H3 to be evaluated. The Statistica 8.0 package was used for statistical analysis. It should be stated that my institution has not required to have ethical committee approval for study presented in this article.

5. Results

5.1. Grouping respondents based on opinions towards marketing offers

On the basis of the results of the cognitive and critical analysis of the literature and the non-structured interview, 19 statements related to food products were formulated. The statements reflected opinions related to marketing offers available on the market and the way they are perceived. As mentioned previously, the respondents were asked to evaluate each of the statements on a 5-grade Likert scale.

On the basis of the Kaiser Criterion, significant factors with eigenvalues higher than 1 were identified. Using factor analysis, the primary set of 19 variables was reduced to four principal components. The principal components explain over 63% of the overall variability (Table 1). Applying factor analysis allowed the research aims A1 and A2 to be achieved. It also allowed hypotheses H1 and H2 to be checked.

Table 1.

Hierarchy of factors based on their eigenvalues determined using the Kaiser Criterion.

Principal components (factors)	Principal component eigenvalue	% of overall eigenvalues (variance)	Cumulated eigenvalue	Cumulated % of eigenvalues
Factor 1 – image-and-sales (IS)	5.40	28.2	5.36	28.2
Factor 2 – patriotic (PAT)	3.48	18.3	8.83	46.5
Factor 3 – prosumptive-and-ethnocentric (PRO-ETN)	1.96	10.3	10.80	56.8
Factor 4 – european (EUR)	1.25	6.6	12.05	63.4

Source: Author's study based on research results.

The variables from each of the identified factors were given the following names: image and sales, patriotic, prosumptive and ethnographic, and European. It is worth underlining that each of the statements in the questionnaire reflects taking part in the market as a conscious participant. This therefore is against some opinions presented in the literature (including by such authors as Ind and Coates (2013); Hippel et al. (2011)) that contemporary purchasers can be unconscious participants of market activity.

The first principal component with an eigenvalue of 5.40 explains over 28% of the overall variability of the phenomenon studied. It includes three variables reflecting respondents’ perceptions and purchases of Polish products in other countries of the European Union and beyond (Table 2 shows the scale proposed by the author). In other words, this factor does not contain any variables that reflect opinions connected with the material features of Polish food offers or opinions connected with native offers on the native market. The lack of these opinions in this principal component means that they are not the main opinions. Due to this, for the respondents in this study, hypothesis H2 can be rejected.

Table 2.

Factor analysis of respondents’ opinions related to marketing offers.

Respondents' opinions	Symbol	IS	PAT	PRO-ETN	EUR
I would like only products manufactured in Poland to be available on the Polish market.	a	-0.022	0.713	0.021	0.317
I would like products manufactured in Poland to predominate on the Polish market.	b	0.182	0.805	-0.023	0.024
I would like only products manufactured in other EU countries to be available on the Polish market.	c	-0.167	0.249	0.050	0.795
I would like products manufactured in other EU countries to predominate on the Polish market.	d	-0.242	0.045	0.104	0.804
I would like only Polish-owned stores to operate on the Polish market.	e	-0.048	0.810	0.146	0.069
I would like Polish-owned stores to predominate on the Polish market.	f	0.066	0.795	0.099	-0.096
I would like only foreign-owned stores to operate on the Polish market.	g	-0.297	0.109	-0.119	0.631
I would like products manufactured in Poland to be bought more eagerly in other EU countries.	h	0.752	-0.029	0.095	-0.129
I would like products manufactured in Poland to be bought more eagerly in countries beyond the EU.	i	0.757	0.153	0.108	-0.123
I would like products manufactured in Poland to be distinctly marked as Polish.	j	0.690	0.077	0.276	-0.282
I would like Polish offerors to create societies of ‘purchase patriots’.	k	0.289	0.211	0.566	0.060
I would like to actively contribute to the improvement of Polish products.	l	0.114	0.193	0.790	0.024
I would like to actively contribute to advertising campaigns of Polish products to make them more interesting and effective.	m	0.111	0.073	0.884	0.014
I would like to actively contribute to the fact that Polish offerors are honest towards purchasers.	n	0.251	0.050	0.735	-0.011
I would like Polish purchasers to buy only products manufactured in Poland.	o	0.092	0.711	0.271	0.156
I would like Polish purchasers to mainly buy products manufactured in Poland.	p	0.309	0.683	0.204	-0.019
I would like Polish purchasers to perceive products manufactured in Poland in a better light.	q	0.660	0.315	0.225	-0.092
I would like purchasers in other countries to perceive products manufactured in Poland in a better light.	r	0.770	0.117	0.224	-0.165
I would like Polish purchasers to perceive products manufactured in other EU countries in a better light.	s	0.454	-0.326	0.106	0.506

The bold values underlined present the variables significant within given factor.

Source: Author's study based on research results.

The second principal component, with an eigenvalue of 3.48 explains almost 10% less of the overall variability of the system and contains five variables. Factor loadings of two of these are higher than 0.8. The variables constituting the second factor are connected with respondents’ opinions towards only Polish store owners operating on the Polish market and Polish people buying only products manufactured in Poland.

The third principal component with a much lower eigenvalue explains a much lower part of the overall variability of the system and includes three variables with unequivocally prosumptive overtones. The highest factor loading within this component (as high as 0.884) is related to the variable which demonstrates respondents’ willingness to actively contribute to advertising campaigns of Polish products to make these more interesting and effective. It is worth adding that this is the highest factor loading in comparison with the loadings of all of the other variables analysed. This factor also includes variables connected with willingness to actively contribute to the improvement of Polish products and the increase in the level of honesty of Polish offerors towards purchasers. It must be underlined that there were no variables reflecting prosumptive willingness towards foreign offers within this component. Due to this, for the respondents in this study hypothesis H1 can be rejected.

The variable related with participating in increasing the level of honesty of Polish offerors is closely connected with ethical aspects that are rightly underlined by many other researchers (including Ferrell et al. (2013) and Ferrell and Ferrell. (2016)) as the key pillar of integration between offerors and purchasers. Moreover, the content of the third component confirms the necessity of applying a wider approach to prosumption than presented by many other authors (e.g. Ritzer et al., 2012; Tapscott, 2008), who limited their approach to prosumption only to cooperation with producers. As one can see, the identified opinions concern not only preparing products but also other areas of marketing requiring cooperation with retailers, service providers, etc. The next conclusion resulting from the content of this factor is related to the subject of mutual activities. According to opinions presented in the literature by some authors (Serafin, 2012) mutual activities can only concern product. However, it must be stated that elements of promotion, the offeror's image, etc. can also be the subjects of cooperation.

The last of the components identified, with an eigenvalue almost five times lower than the eigenvalue of the first principal component, explains over four times less of the overall variability and includes only two variables. The variables reflect respondents’ opinions towards the availability of products manufactured in other EU countries on the Polish market. It is the only factor without ethnocentric overtones, as it contains opinions of an opposite nature.

The remaining three factors identified were of an ethnocentric nature, which was particularly clear for the factor symbolically defined as patriotic. For the third factor, alongside ethnocentrism, the clearly dominant feature was respondents' willingness for prosumptive behaviour. This was thus the only factor which reflected respondents' willingness for active inclusion in the creation of a Polish offer and contribution to its market success. For the two other factors that involved ethnocentric aspects (no. 1 and 2), the respondents did not express willingness for active participation in offerors’ marketing activities.

It should be highlighted that 13 out of the 19 variables analysed fit into the four principal components identified, and six variables did not match any of the factors identified. The six variables include opinions towards distinctly marking products manufactured in Poland as Polish and opinions towards Polish offerors to build a society of ‘purchase patriots’. In terms of the subject of the present paper, this is quite symptomatic. It could indicate a relatively lower significance of these opinions. This might be the result of a relatively high level of market awareness of the respondents, who may be able to easily recognize Polish products and can spontaneously integrate them with values that they find important. However, it is worth pointing out that in the case of the first of these variables, the factor loading amounts to almost 0.7 (it comes to 0.690 within the first factor).

The fact that four principal components have been identified means that the respondents can be divided into four groups based on particular opinions towards marketing offers. The main common feature of each group of respondents is the fact that all of them are participants at certain marketing channel. Even traditional purchasers play this role (compare Wagner et al., 2011; Hastings et al., 2016). However, the level of their desired marketing activity is quite different, and thus their degree of integration with offerors is different too. The lowest degree of integration exists for respondents identified as purchasers (ethnocentric and polycentric), and the highest one exists for respondents identified as prosumers.

As shown in Table 3, opinions related to prosumption exclusively distinguish group 3, and their willingness to actively contribute to the improvement of a marketing offer exclusively exists for Polish products and Polish offerors. Moreover, the respondents in group 3 did not express any other opinions, such as those connected with the presence of foreign products on the Polish market. This emphasizes the high homogeneity of this group. Therefore, it can be stated that in addition to prosumptive reasons, the respondents in group 3 were driven most of all by patriotic reasons, and not the willingness to demonstrate their own skills and abilities, regardless of any benefit of prosumption.

Table 3.

Respondents grouped based on their opinions towards offers on the market.

Group	Letter representing respondents' opinions∗	Final segments
1	r, i, h	Ethnocentric purchasers (EP)
2	e, b, f, a, o
3	m, l, n	Potential ethnocentric prosumers (PEP)
4	d, c	Polycentric purchasers (PP)

Source: Author's study based on research results.

^∗The meaning of letters is shown in Table 2.

The opinions analysed in this paper reflect the level of respondents’ willingness for both prosumption and ethnocentrism. The level can be low or high for each of these trends, which enables the formation of a matrix of prosumptive and ethnocentric willingness (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.

Matrix of prosumptive and ethnocentric openness.

Source: Author's study on the basis of Baruk (2016).

Gathering primary data on a Likert scale made it possible to calculate average grades for each of the 19 statements analysed. It was assumed that a low level of prosumption occurs for numerical value up to 2.5, whereas a value exceeding 2.5 signifies a high level of prosumption. Analogical number brackets can be applied for the level of intensity of ethnocentric attitudes.

The average grades for individual opinions provide information on the significance of each statement for the respondents. These grades made it possible to identify four groups of respondents (Table 3). Only the following three out of the 19 opinions obtained an average grade lower than 2.5: ‘I would like only products manufactured in other EU countries to be available on the Polish market’, ‘I would like products manufactured in other EU countries to predominate on the Polish market’, and ‘I would like only foreign-owned stores to operate on the Polish market’. The average grades of those opinions amounted to 2.35; 2.35; and 2.02, respectively. These opinions form group 4. The third statement did not occur in any of the principal factors that enabled the grouping of respondents.

Finally, the respondents can be divided into three segments. Segments 1 and 2 (Table 3) are ethnographic purchasers. People from segment 4 are polycentric purchasers. Respondents in these three segments did not express willingness for active participation in marketing activities, and their opinions reflect their wishes to fulfil the traditional role of a purchaser.

5.2. Defining the role of ethnocentrism in prosumptive willingness and the dependence between ethnocentrism and prosumption

Based on the results of factor analysis four variables reflecting ethnocentric attitudes were indicated. These variables are marked as ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘e’ and ‘f’ in Table 1. Three variables reflecting prosumeric attitudes 3 variables were indicated ‘l’, ‘m’, and ‘n’ (Table 1). Results of the chi-square test showed that dependencies between both mentioned groups of variables were statistically significant (Table 4). For each analysed pair of variables, the border probability of critical “p” was lower than 0.05. This means that for respondents in this study, hypothesis H3 is true. The use of the chi-square test allowed the research aim A3 to be achieved.

Table 4.

Values of chi-square test for variables reflecting prosumeric and ethnocentric attitudes^∗.

Variables reflecting prosumeric attitudes∗∗	Variables reflecting ethnocentric attitudes∗∗
	a	b	e	f
l	36.8	69.7	30.8	41.3
m	28.9	61.6	28.2	32.2
n	33.2	69.5	29.8	37.7

Source: Author's study based on research results.

^∗For each pair of variables, the border probability of critical “p” was lower than 0.05.

^∗∗The meaning of letters is shown in Table 2.

Segment 3 comprises respondents who show definitely more willingness for active participation in the process of marketing creation. It is the only segment within which the participants express distinct openness towards being prosumers. However, the willingness to get involved in marketing activities concerns only Polish products and their advertisements and Polish offerors. Therefore, this group of respondents can be defined as ‘potential ethnocentric prosumers’. They could become authentic partners for native offerors and integrate with them not only for behavioural reasons, but also psychological ones. It must be underlined that within this study, current prosumers were not identified. Respondents' opinions were researched - their market behaviours were not analysed. This will be the subject of future research.

6. Discussion & conclusions

Previous studies have shown that many purchasers prefer foreign goods or services because their quality is perceived as better than the quality of domestic products (Kashi, 2013). This is particularly apparent in the case of purchasers in emerging countries (Nabi et al., 2019). This attitude can also reflect the desire to be unique (Rodrigo et al., 2019), etc. However, the results of the analysis conducted for this study indicate that the respondents tended to express ethnocentric rather than polycentric attitudes. Expectations concerning foreign offers were expressed by respondents from only one out of the three segments eventually identified. Moreover, only one segment was characterised with distinct willingness to get involved in the process of preparing a marketing offer, and it related only to Polish products and Polish offerors. Additionally, respondents from this segment did not express other opinions, and in the case of the remaining two segments, no prosumptive opinions were mentioned. It can be stated that the willingness for prosumption from the respondents representing Polish purchasers is connected with their attitudes toward native offers. At this stage of research, hypotheses H1 and H2 can be rejected. However, after applying the chi-square test to the results of this study, it is possible to confirm hypothesis H3.

The identified relationship between respondents' readiness for prosumption and their open attitudes towards domestic offers has an important theoretical meaning. Finding a dependency between prosumption and ethnocentrism fills the cognitive gap that was found after analysing the literature on marketing, consumer behaviours, etc. Previous research has shown different aspects of ethnocentrism (Vida and Reardon, 2008; Ferrín, 2015; Szromnik and Wolanin-Jarosz, 2013; Wanninayake and Chovancová, 2012, etc.) or prosumption (Chandler and Chen, 2015; Seran (Potra) and Izvercian, 2014; Fox, 2012; Galvagno and Dalli, 2014; Carrington and Neville, 2016; Witell et al., 2011, etc.), but none of them have taken into consideration the mutual relations between these two trends. Creating new concepts like ‘potential ethnocentric prosumer’ also contributes to the theory on prosumption and ethnocentrism.

The discovery of a relationship between prosumption and ethnocentrism has great practical marketing, social and managerial consequences. So far, the connections between such features as age (Awdziej et al., 2016) or willingness to buy products (Vabø and Hansen, 2014; Josiassen et al., 2011) and ethnocentric attitudes have been analysed. The results of this research could be very important for offerors, especially for native ones.

For example, a potential ethnocentric prosumer could become a key marketing partner for native offerors, enabling products and other elements of marketing offers to be more compatible with purchasers’ preferences. Knowledge, experience, abilities, etc. of purchasers can enrich the marketing resources of native offerors. Due to this, they should create proper conditions for mutual cooperation with purchasers who want to take an active part in the marketing process. Moreover, they should undertake complex activities to activate other purchasers who show more conservative attitudes. Participating in marketing activities increases the level of integration not only between offerors and prosumers, but also between prosumers and other individuals open for cooperation with native offerors.

From the social point of view, potential ethnocentric prosumers could be the base for creating a community of active and involved purchasers influencing the contemporary market and its development. Supporting native offerors by taking part in the process of preparing, changing, improving, etc. domestic offers can become a lifestyle for ethnocentric prosumers and inspire other purchasers with ethnocentric attitudes.

6.1. Managerial implications

From the point of view of managers of contemporary offerors, it is worth noting that among the types of respondents analysed, it is relatively the easiest to build integration with potential prosumers, who expressed more willingness for cooperation with offerors. For ethnocentric and polycentric purchasers, distinct willingness for prosumption was not revealed. Therefore, in order to build purchase loyalty in this instance, a feeling of integration must be created. This is typically behavioural (vertical) integration rather than emotional integration, which is easier to shape in the case of potential prosumers. In relation to ethnocentric purchasers and potential ethnocentric prosumers, it is definitely easier for native offerors to arouse a feeling of integration on the basis of ethnocentric attitudes. On the other hand, as far as polycentric purchasers and potential polycentric prosumers are concerned, creating a feeling of integration based on ethnocentric premises would be difficult. Moreover, regardless of their origin, offerors have similar chances for arousing beneficial attitudes and behaviours in the form of purchase loyalty (in the case of polycentric purchasers) and getting involved in the preparation of offers (in the case of potential polycentric prosumers, i.e. a segment which was not identified among the respondents).

Knowledge of prosumption and ethnocentrism is definitely important for offerors as it helps them choose appropriate ways to build a marketing partnership with purchasers. With knowledge, offerors would be able to make use of purchasers’ attitudes towards food offers of different origins as well as attitudes reflecting the level of willingness to participate in marketing creation. When considering ethnocentrism, these conclusions are particularly important for domestic offerors. They can effectively distinguish themselves from other offerors by using discovered dependences in their marketing decisions. Respondents in this study who were willing to cooperate with Polish offerors wanted to take part in preparing promotion campaigns, improve Polish products, and influence the level of honesty of offerors. These three areas can become the key marketing values created by offerors and purchasers together and would enable offerors to compete against others more effectively.

6.2. Limitations of the study and the directions of future research

It should be emphasized that the conducted research has certain limitations. These include the fact that it was carried out among Polish adult purchasers and concerned their general opinions and attitudes towards food products. It was not the aim of the present study to consider the specificity of various individual groups of products. The research also focused on identifying how significant ethnocentric attitudes are for prosumers in their willingness to actively co-create an offer. However, the dependence between ethnocentrism and prosumption and the level of integration between purchasers and offerors was not given detailed empirical analysis. An analysis of dependencies between these categories would require analysis of actual behaviours reflecting the level of ethnocentrism and prosumption, and relational factors demonstrating the level of the expected and actual integration between purchasers and offerors. Of course, there are many variables which can potentially determine ethnocentric prosumption such as familiarity or emotional attitudes toward goods. These have not been analysed as this was not the aim of the study.

Taking into account the limitations of this study, further research will look into the issues of ethnocentrism and prosumption, spreading the subject range of the research to people beyond Poland and the object range to behaviour analysis. Purchaser attitudes and behaviours will also be identified in relation to various groups of products. This will enable a comparative analysis to be carried out in an international dimension, inter-product dimension, age of respondents dimension, etc. Moreover, some other categories will be analysed as potential determinants of the mutual relationships between purchasers’ ethnocentric attitudes and their willingness for prosumption, including product familiarity, product knowledge or influence promotion. This will allow multidimensional analysis to be conducted.

Declarations

Author contribution statement

Agnieszka Izabela Baruk: Conceived and designed the experiments; Performed the experiments; Analyzed and interpreted the data; Contributed reagents, materials, analysis tools or data; Wrote the paper.

Funding statement

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Competing interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

No additional information is available for this paper.