Indian consumer’s receptivity to Chinese products in ‘aatma nirbhar Bharath’ era

Abstract

With the global supply chain being disrupted due to the covid-19 pandemic and India embroiled in border tension with China, the Prime Minister of India gave an emergency appeal for ‘Aatma Nirbhar Bharat’ (self-reliant India). Given these circumstances, it is purposeful to comprehend how the consumers of India differentiate between the Chinese products and the domestic alternatives in this post-pandemic era of Aatma Nirbhar Bharat, where there are many product categories for which there is no or very few domestic alternatives available. The current study inspects the relationship among consumer ethnocentrism, animosity, quality-evaluation of Chinese goods and perceived inadequacy of domestic alternatives, and their impact on Indian consumers’ purchase intention regarding Chinese goods. Structural equation modeling was adapted to experiment with the suggested sample. The research outputs indicate that the sentiments of animosity and the degree of ethnocentrism in consumers have a remarkable influence on the buying intention regarding Chinese goods even when no or very few domestic alternatives are available. It is also found from the results that the perceived inadequacy of domestic alternatives has no significant impact on the buying intention regarding Chinese goods.