It’s who you know: intracultural differences in ethnic product consumption

Abstract

Reports a study of 214 Chinese Canadian consumers across eight product categories. This study shows that intracultural differences in consumer behavior are inadequately explained by the psychological construct of ethnic identification, and that additional explanatory power is achieved when incorporating the ethnic homogeneity of social ties. The results of the study support the proposition that the ethnic homogeneity of strong social ties exerts significant influence over an individual’s consumption of ethnic products, and is a much more robust predictor variable than ethnic identification. Also calls for a more theory‐based measure for the construct ethnic identification.