EFFECTS OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STATUS AND ECO-PRODUCT ON CONSUMPTION VALUES: FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF US CONSUMERS

Consumers select a product based on numerous product characteristics. Numerous studies conducted earlier revealed that consumers in developing countries preferred products made in western or developed countries because their product quality is better than the quality of local products (Lee & Nguyen, 2017; Dao & Heidt, 2018; Rodrigo et al., 2019). Moreover, consumers are increasingly concerned about manufacturers’ environmental issues. Although ethical consumers believe that eco-products could save the environment, some consumers are not concerned about the eco-products and thus select products based on other product attributes (Joshi & Rahman, 2015). Hence, it becomes very challenging for retailers to select a country among developed or developing countries to manufacture eco-friendly products and understand how consumer knowledge of eco-product and ethnocentrism affect consumers’ perceived consumption values.

To address this problem, this study explored whether economic development status (a domestic developed country vs. a foreign developing country) and an eco-product (eco- vs. non-eco product) influence consumers’ perceived consumption values and how consumption values influence consumers’ purchase intentions, considering the different levels of moderating effects of ethnocentrism and knowledge of eco-products. The proposed model begins with the link between dependent variables (i.e., perceived consumption values) and independent variables (i.e., economic development status and eco-products) and two moderators (i.e., ethnocentrism and knowledge of eco-product) between these two variable sets.

The proposed model developed six (H1 to H6) hypotheses. Analysis of variance (ANOVA), the process macro (Hayes, 2018) and regression analysis were used to analyze the developed hypotheses. The results revealed that economic development status showed significant effects on consumers’ consumption values and ethnocentrism showed a significant moderation role between economic development status and consumers’ consumption values. However, the interactional effect of eco/non-eco products with economic development status results showed an insignificant outcome. At the same time, this study also found an insignificant effect of eco/non-eco product on consumers’ consumption values and an insignificant moderation effect of knowledge of eco-products on the relationship between eco-products (eco vs. non-eco) and consumption values. Based on the findings, insightful theoretical contributions and managerial implications are discussed. Lastly, the study concludes with its limitations and future research recommendations.