Consumer racism: a scale modification

Abstract

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. The purpose of this paper is 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) is 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), is 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 eight-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.