Mortality salience and regional consumer behavior

Consumer Ethnocentrism is an individual’s tendency to view the in-group’s objects of consumption as superior to those of the out-group. As Shimp and Sharma (1987) stated, this tendency increases when people experience an economic threat from foreign competition.

Economic threat may be an important source of out-group derogation but another existential threat that also seems to influence ethnocentric tendencies can be derived from terror management theory (for an overview see Greenberg, Solomon, and Pyszczynski 1997). According to this theory, affiliation to an in-group and belief in its worldviews serve as a mechanism to buffer our death-related anxieties. The bolstering of a shared cultural worldview against views of the out-group could lead people to ethnocentrism (e.g. Nelson et al. 1997).

Consequently, priming thoughts of people’s own mortality (mortality salience) should also lead to stronger ethnocentric consumer preferences. Indeed, an ethnocentric bias related to mortality salience is not only an in-group–out-group phenomenon, but it can also be found towards objects of consumption (consumer ethnocentrism): e.g., preferences for national cultural items (cars, food, sports, etc.) under mortality salient conditions (Jonas, Fritsche, and Greenberg 2005). As information that reminds us of the inevitability of our own demise is frequently presented in the media, the influence of our existential concerns on ethnocentric consumption behavior should be investigated thoroughly.

Since many consumer brands and products (e.g., foods and beverages) are mainly or exclusively marketed and consumed within a local region, we were interested in whether ethnocentrism effects only occur on a national level or if they can be found among regions as well. In accordance with social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979), worldviews in a regional context should have at least the same strong influence on individuals’ cognitive structure as national views because regions are less inclusive than nations and so they should provide the individual with an even more homogeneous worldview.

We analyzed the local beer preferences of the inhabitants of two German cities under mortality salient versus control conditions. We chose the cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf because they are situated close to each other and, objectively, have an almost identical cultural background. Nevertheless, from the inhabitants' perspective, a cultural competition can be observed that is manifest in different traditions, lifestyles, and consumption patterns. Hence, the residents of each city were assumed to perceive at least an unconscious threat to their regional worldviews if asked to evaluate a cultural symbol (we chose beer sorts) from the other city.

We were also interested in whether the predicted ethnocentrism effects would take place if a less cognitively controlled concept like taste was the dependent measure. Thus, gustatory preferences between two German beers that either came from either the participants’ own or the competing region (within the same nation) were examined.

H 1:         A regional ethnocentrism effect—i.e., a main effect of beer sort—will occur across all experimental conditions: the beer sort of participants’ own city will taste better than that of the other city.

H 2:         This main effect will be qualified by an interaction effect between priming and beer sort. Mortality salience will additionally increase this ethnocentrism effect.

In our experiment, we used a 2 (city) x 2 (mortality salience vs. control condition) x 2 (own beer vs. foreign beer) between-subject design with condition and beer sort randomly manipulated and two fixed city samples (Düsseldorf and Cologne). The dependent measure was evaluation of beer’s taste compared to an idealized one. 192 people (72 females and 120 males) – 96 from each city – agreed to participate in our study (participants were between 19 and 88 years old; M = 43.8).

Results show that both hypotheses could be confirmed. Participants in both cities and both conditions rated their own beer as tasting significantly better than the beer of the other city (F[1, 184] = 25.46, p < .001). This main effect was qualified by a significant interaction effect between sort and priming: the taste difference was greater in the mortality salience condition than in the control condition (F[1, 184] = 7.85, p < .01) mainly due to a devaluation of the foreign region's beer sort.

To summarize, we would argue that our research adds to the emerging line of research that relates terror management theory to consumer behavior. Our research showed that individuals that have previously thought about their own death have a tendency towards regional consumer ethnocentrism. According to terror management and social identity theories, we found that regional identity serves as an anxiety buffer when mortality is salient, and consumption objects that challenge our regional worldviews – like a foreign region’s beer sort – are devaluated more strongly under that condition.

References

Greenberg, J., S. Solomon, and T. Pyszczynski (1997), "Terror management theory of self-esteem and cultural worldviews: Empirical assessments and conceptual refinements," in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology,  Vol. 29, ed. M. P. Zanna,  San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 61-139.

Jonas, E., I. Fritsche, and J. Greenberg (2005), "Currencies as cultural symbols: An existential psychological perspective on reactions of Germans toward the Euro," Journal of Economic Psychology, 26 (1), 129-146.

Nelson, L. J., D. L. Moore, J. Olivetti, and T. Scott (1997), "General and personal mortality salience and nationalistic bias," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23 (8), 884-892.

Shimp, T. A. and S. Sharma (1987), "Consumer ethnocentrism: Construction and validation of the CETSCALE," Journal of Marketing Research, 24 (3), 280-289.

Tajfel, H. and J. C. Turner (1979), "An integrative theory of intergroup conflict," in The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, eds. W. G. Austin and S. Worchel,  Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole, 33-48.