THE ROLE OF CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHNOCENTRIC CONSUMPTION TENDENCY AND PURCHASE INTENTION

Abstract

Consumer ethnocentrism, defined as the tendency of consumers to prefer domestic products or services, has been showing its effect in recent years, and the necessity of not ignoring the cultural intelligence that consumers have is an important issue that commercial enterprises emphasize. Cultural intelligence is defined as a system in which the knowledge and skills that enable individuals to shape, choose and adapt to different cultural dimensions in their environment are effective. In order to meet consumer expectations, businesses need to consider and evaluate many dimensions in their marketing strategies, as well as the culture of the consumer and ethnocentric consumption tendencies among these dimensions. In this study prepared with this purpose in mind, the ethnocentric tendencies of consumers living in Turkey will be measured, and it is also aimed to determine the direction of individuals' cultural intelligence and to reveal the effect of cultural intelligence on the relationship between ethnocentric tendencies and purchase intentions.

A survey technique was used to collect data in the study. The data of the research was collected online via a survey form created over the internet. In the first part of the survey form, the demographic information form scale, in the second part, the cultural intelligence scale, in the third part, the CETSCALE scale, which is used to measure ethnocentric consumption tendency and whose validity has been proven in many studies, and in the fourth part, the purchase intention scale were used. SPSS v29 program was used to analyze the data in the study. Within the scope of the research, descriptive statistics regarding the demographic characteristics of the participants were included first, then the validity and reliability analysis of the scales were performed, factor analyses were performed for each scale, and finally regression analyses were performed. Within the scope of hypothesis tests, regression analysis was performed in order to determine the effect of the independent variables of the research on the dependent variables of the research. With the hypotheses of the research, the effect of ethnocentric tendency on ethnocentric purchase intention, the level of cultural intelligence, which is an indicator of openness and familiarity with foreign cultures, was tested with the sub-dimensions of cultural intelligence. In particular, motivational cultural intelligence and meta-cognitive cultural intelligence have been found to play an effective role in the relationship between ethnocentric consumption tendency and ethnocentric purchase intention. The originality of the study is that the role of consumers' cultural intelligence in the effect of consumers' ethnocentric tendencies on purchase intention has been revealed.