Xenocentrism and formal education : evaluating its impact on the behavior of Chilean consumers

Understanding social behavior and explaining its implications is essential when examining consumer xenocentric behavior. This study evaluated the direct effects of consumer xenoncentrism on product attitude and purchase intention of imported products and analyzed the moderating impact of formal education on xenocentric consumer behavior considering groups with higher and low formal education levels. Structural equation modeling technique and multigroup analysis based on samples collected from Chilean consumers were used to analyze the research model. There were 295 effective online questionnaires (42.4% females and 57.6% males). This study's findings suggest that consumer xenocentric effects are directly related to imported products' product attitude (G: R2 = 0.254; L: R2 = 0.121; H: R2 = 0.327) and purchase intention (G: R2 = 0.454; L: R2 = 0.469; H: R2 = 0.365). In addition, findings exhibit that xenocentric consumer behaviors are more significant when associated with formal educational level (G: 0.575; L: 0.640; H: 0.443). Therefore, as education levels increase, the xenocentric effect also increases. An important application of these findings is that education in emerging countries and developing economies should strengthen local production valorization and promote marketing strategies that foster the sustainable consumption of products manufactured in their own countries.