Alternative Proposals to Measure Consumer Ethnocentric Behavior: A Narrative Literature Review

Abstract

CETSCALE (Consumer Ethnocentrism Tendencies Scale), the scale developed by Shimp and Sharma in 1987 to study consumer ethnocentric behavior, has received preferential use in the literature, with numerous replications carried out in countries on all continents. Although it was proposed as a 17-item scale along with a smaller version of only ten items, studies that use only a part of these have been become increasingly common. To some extent, this practice responds to the multidimensional behavior of CETSCALE, as can be widely confirmed. It is for this reason that a growing consensus is in favor of reviewing the scale as a tool to measure ethnocentrism, made evident by the appearance of new alternative scales. CEESCALE and CES are two of the most recent proposals, which were developed with a similar number of items but grouped into a number of clearly defined dimensions, providing more robust results.

1. Introduction

For over 30 years, researchers have been applying CETSCALE (Consumer Ethnocentrism Tendencies Scale), which was designed by Shimp and Sharma (1987) [1] to represent consumer beliefs in the United States about the suitability of acquiring foreign products. This scale has also been the most widely-preferred tool in the literature for studying consumer ethnocentrism. The authors’ interpretation of said concept encompasses responsibility and morality in purchasing products manufactured abroad versus the loyalty of consumers to products manufactured in their own country. This implies that, for the ethnocentric consumer, importing products from other countries is not considered appropriate as it is not patriotic, and what is more, would be a detriment to the domestic economy and employment [2,3].

Although its original application focused on consumers in the United States, it has subsequently been validated at the international level by numerous works in a wide range of geographic areas covering the five continents. More specifically, in the case of Europe, we find applications in countries such as France [4], Germany [5,6], Poland [7,8], Russia [3,9,10], Slovenia [11,12], Serbia [13], Spain [14,15], Turkey [16,17], and United Kingdom [18,19].

Regarding Asia, there have been a large number of studies carried out in China [20,21,22], India [23,24,25], and Malaysia [26,27,28], along with several works conducted in Indonesia [29,30] and Iran [31].

As for Oceania, there is a smaller number of studies, but the most notable are those from Australia [32,33] and New Zealand [34,35]. With regard to Africa, we find works conducted in Ethiopia [36], Mauritius [37], Morocco [38], South Africa [39], and Tunisia [40].

Finally, with regards to the American continent, this method of analysis has been applied in Brazil [41], Canada [42], Chile [43], Guatemala [44], and Mexico [45], without forgetting to mention subsequent studies carried out in the U.S.A, such as those by Netemeyer, Durvasula, and Lichtenstein (1991) [46]; Duvarsula, Andrews, and Netemeyer (1997) [47]; Lee, Hong, and Lee (2003) [48]; and Weber, Lambert, Conrad, and Jennings (2015) [49].

As can be clearly seen, CETSCALE has experienced widespread popularity worldwide as an indisputable referent for analyzing consumer feelings of ethnocentrism, surpassing other alternative scales presented in the literature, such as those by Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford (1950) [50]; Warr, Faust, and Harrison (1967) [51]; and Chang and Ritter (1974) [52].

Nevertheless, in recent years, numerous works have also proposed the need to review the concept of consumer ethnocentrism and how it is measured [6,42,53,54,55,56]. These aspects have been called into question primarily because empirical evidence has revealed a non-unidimensionality behavior of the scale [24,49,57,58], which translates to the existence of different interpretations of ethnocentrism.

As highlighted by Sharma (2015) [59], there is no consensus on the conceptual and empirical structure of CETSCALE and its applicability across different countries, product categories, and consumer characteristics. To overcome these problems, many studies use shorter versions of the original CETSCALE; however, this raises concerns about its conceptual equivalence and construct validity.

Effectively, the possibility to consider different assessments of a reduced set of the 17 items that comprise CETSCALE has resulted in, to some extent, a host of works applying a fragmented version of the scale [60,61,62,63], which in some cases has resulted in proposals presented as new scales [64,65,66].

Moreover, as the construct has gone unaltered since its outset in 1987, other alternative scales have been designed which even obtain more robust results. This is the case of CEESCALE (Consumer Ethnocentrism Extended Scale), the scale recently developed by Siamagka and Balbanis (2015) [67] that encompasses five different dimensions of ethnocentrism, and also CES (Revised Consumer Ethnocentrism Scale), the scale proposed by Sharna (2015) [59] that reconceptualizes the concept of consumer ethnocentrism in a three-dimensional attitude construct, consisting of affective, cognitive, and behavioral components.

Based on this multidimensional behavior, the present study performs a review of CETSCALE applications conducted over the last three decades, specifically analyzing those that have partially applied the scale used in the original version by Shimp and Sharma and those that have considered different interpretations of the items set when confirming the scale’s non-unidimensionality. Thus, Section 2 analyzes the different versions of CETSCALE that have been utilized in the literature and that, in some cases, have subsequently been replicated in other investigations. Next, this section examines the multidimensional nature of the scale based on the numerous studies that confirmed this result. Having already established the reasoning behind the need for a new way of measuring ethnocentrism, Section 3 introduces CEESCALE and CES, two new instruments for measuring consumer ethnocentrism, by analyzing the structure of both scales. Finally, a discussion section (Section 4) is included to address the most important aspects analyzed, and a conclusions section.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Versions of CETSCALE: Literature Review

As highlighted by Jiménez et al. (2014) [6], one of the most notable aspects found when reviewing the literature is undoubtedly the vast number of versions of CETSCALE that have been utilized. Albeit the original work by Shimp and Sharma (1987) [1] proposed a 17-item scale (CET-17) (Table 1), these authors also offered the possibility to use a reduced scale with 10 items (CET-10). While CET-17 has been the most widely used overall, a review of the literature shows that numerous works have also employed the reduced scale [19,45,68,69].

Table 1. Original CETSCALE.

Nº	Item
1	American people should always buy American-made products instead of imports
2	Only those products that are unavailable in US should be imported (*)
3	Buy American-made products. Keep American working
4	American products, first, last, and foremost (*)
5	Purchasing foreign-made products is un-American (*)
6	It is not right to purchase foreign products, because it puts Americans out of jobs (*)
7	A real American should always buy American-made products (*)
8	We should purchase products manufactured in America instead of letting other countries get rich off us (*)
9	It is always best to purchase American products
10	There should be very little trading or purchasing of goods from other countries unless out of necessity
11	Americans should not buy foreign products, because this hurts American business and causes unemployment (*)
12	Curbs should be put on all imports
13	It may cost me in the long run but I prefer to support American products (*)
14	Foreigners should not be allowed to put their products on our markets
15	Foreign products should be taxed heavily to reduce their entry into the US
16	We should buy from foreign countries only those products that we cannot obtain within our own country (*)
17	American consumers who purchase products made in other countries are responsible for putting their fellow Americans out of work (*)

Source: Shimp and Sharma (1987). (*) Items on reduced version CETSCALE (Consumer Ethnocentrism Tendencies Scale).

The use of these “reduced” scales is a highly common practice, as cited by Li and He (2013) [70], given the high internal correlation that exists between the items of a scale when there are very many, as in the case of CETSCALE. What is more, such scales also prove to be an efficient and reliable tool, as stated by Steenkamp and Baumgartner (1995) [18].

By presenting this double version of CETSCALE, Shimp and Sharma opened the door for other alternate versions to be proposed, which now can be found in the literature. In this sense, while in some cases this only implied modifying the wording of the items in the reduced version [8,64,65,71].

In these cases, authors who decide not to utilize CET-17 or CET-10 conduct an item selection that responds to the need to adapt the scale to the specific geographic and socio-cultural context of their analyses. Therefore, for example, John and Brady (2010) [61] select seven items; Sharma (2011) [62] chose six items; Strizhakova, Coulter, and Price (2012) [72] select five; Ma, Wang, and Hao (2012) [73] chose only eight items; and Shu, Strombeck, and Hsieh (2013) [63] utilize five or seven depending on the geographic context.

Logically, this large number of different versions has distorted the use of CETSCALE under the pretext that, from the perspective of the researchers, they were adaptations of the original, but in practice they have resulted in a multi-fragmented use of the scale. Furthermore, in their efforts to demonstrate the validity of various theoretical approaches, in some studies researchers have proposed an alternative scale design, when in reality what they presented was merely a section of items from CET-17 that even maintained the original wording. The most surprising aspect is that some of these “new scales” were subsequently used in other works in the literature (see Table 2).

Table 2. Adapted versions of CETSCALE.

New Version of Scale	Other Applications	Items	Items (Detail)
Keylor et al. (1996) [74]	Keylor and Hult (1999) [75] Thelen et al. (2011) 1 [76]	5	2,8,9,11,13
Klein et al. (1998) [71]	Ishii (2009) [77] Wang et al. (2013) [78]	6	4,5,6,8,16,17
Steenkamp et al. (1999) [64]	Klein (2002) [79] Cleveland et al. (2013) [80]	4	6,7,8,11
Batra et al. (2000) [65]	Alden et al. (2006) [84] Cleveland et al. (2009) [53] Zhou et al. (2010) [83] Nelson and Deshpande (2013) [81] Jin et al. (2015) [82]	4	5,6,7,11
Klein et al. (2006) [66]	Bevan-Dye et al. (2012) 2 [39] Auruskeviciene et al., (2012) [85] Tong and Li (2013) [22] Aktan and Chao (2016) [86] Fernández and Bande (2013) 3 [87]	6	2,4,7,11,13,17
Fernández and Bande (2013) 3 [87]	Pestar et al. (2018) [12]	5	2,4,7,11,17
Prats and Vida (2013) [88]	Purwanto (2014) [89]	5	1,6,11,16,17

Source: Own elaboration. ¹ Remove an item from the scale; ² Add one more item to the scale; ³ It is a adapted version of Klein et al. (2006) removing one item.

In this regard, one of the first adaptations of CETSCALE that we find in the literature is the scale designed by Keillor, Hult, Erffmeyer, and Bakakus (1996) [74], which only contains five items from CET-17 (2, 8, 9, 11, and 13), and that is part of NATID, a scale that they develop to measure national identity. This adapted scale was later used by Keillor and Hult (1999) [75] and Thelen, Yoo, and Magnini (2011) [76].

Klein et al. (1998) [71] also designed a scale that only contained six items from CET-10 (items 4, 5, 6, 8, 16, and 17). In this case, the authors made a deliberate decision to modify the scale after they had applied CET-10 and it failed to display a unidimensional structure. Thus, they opted to eliminate four items, thereby obtaining their desired objective. The utility of this scale is confirmed by other applications in works found in the literature, such as those by Ishii (2009) [77] and Wang, He, and Li (2013) [78], both carried out among Chinese consumers, and that by Klein et al. (1998) [71].

One of the new reduced designs is found in the work by Steenkamp et al. (1999) [64], in which the authors propose a scale comprised on merely four items from CET-17 (6, 7, 8 and 11), precisely those that obtain a higher factorial load in the original work by Shimp and Sharma (1987) [1]. The authors justify their decision to present these four items with a correlation greater than 0.95 to CET-10, utilizing data previously obtained in Greece, Great Britain, Belgium, and Spain. This scale is used by Klein (2002) [79] and Clevelan, Laroche, and Hallab (2013) [80].

Another reduced scale proposed in the literature is that of Batra et al. (2000) [65], following the line of Steenkamp et al. (1999) [64]. In this case, although four items are also used (5, 6, 7, and 11), item 8 is replaced by 5 and there is a slight modification in the wording of item 6. This scale has been utilized by Cleveland et al. (2009) [53], Nelson and Deshpande (2013) [81], Jin et al. (2015) [82], and Zhou, Yang, and Hui (2010) [83], albeit in this last case, slight changes are made to the wording of items 6 and 11. In addition, said scale is also used in the study by Alden, Steenkamp, and Batra (2006) [84], albeit respecting the original wording of item 6.

Other new versions of the scale include those proposed by Klein et al. (2006) [66] and Altintas and Tokol (2007) [60], in which the authors again experiment with CET-17, creating new designs that both include six items, albeit they do not coincide (2, 4, 7, 11, 13, and 17 in the former; 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 11 in the latter). The scale of Klein et al. (2006) [66], also is used in the studies by Auruskeviciene, Vianelli, and Reardon (2012) [85], Tong and Li (2013) [22], Aktan and Chao (2016) [86], and Bevan-Dye et al. (2012) [39], although the latter incorporated an additional item. A similar case occurs with the study by Fernández and Bande (2013) [87], which adapts the scale by Klein et al. (2006) [66] by eliminating one of the items (2, 4, 7, 11, and 17). What is surprising is that this new 5-item scale was in turn used in the work by Pestar et al. (2018) [12].

One final scale worth mentioning is that of Prats and Vida (2013) [88], in which only five items are utilized (1, 6, 11, 16, and 17), albeit the wording of items 1 and 6 are slightly modified. This scale was subsequently used by Purwanto (2014) [89].

We believe there are several explanations for this widespread practice of using a reduced number of items from CET-17. The first reason could lie in the high internal correlation that exists among the 17 items in CETSCALE, as highlighted by Klein (2002) [79], which would naturally lead researchers to create a reduced scale. For example, this is precisely what Klein et al. (1998) [71] and Ma et al. (2012) [73] opted to do when they directly eliminated four and two items, respectively, from CET-10, thus avoiding the problem of correlation. The second explanation is directly linked to the specific objective of a given study and the resulting convenience of using only a portion of the scale for a particular aim. The third reason relates to the fact itself that numerous works, such as those that will be presented in the following section, have confirmed the multidimensionality of the scale, which would allow researchers to choose the items that represent one or various dimensions with no need to use the complete item set.

2.2. Multidimensionaliy of CETSCALE

Unidimensionality implies that one single latent trait or construct is included in the base of the item set [90], meaning it seeks to explain most of the observed variance in responses to the items by using only one latent attribute [91].

The literature contains a large number of works, conducted in different cultural contexts, which question the existence of a single dimension when applying CETSCALE (see Table 3). These works obtain two, or in some cases three and even four different dimensions that explain the ethnocentric behavior of consumers within a specific cultural and geographic context.

Table 3. Works that have confirmed the multidimensionality of CETSCALE.

Study (Chronological Order)	Country	CETSCALE Version	Number of Dimensions
Marcoux et al. (1997) [7]	Poland	17 items a	3
Mavondo and Tan (1999) [92]	Malaysia	17 items b	3
Yu and Albaun (2002) [57]	Hong Kong (UK)	17 items b	4
	Hong Kong (UK)	10 items b	2
	Hong Kong (China)	17 items b	2
Douglas and Nijssen (2003) [93]	Holland	10 items c	2
Acharya and Elliot (2003) [32]	Australia	17 items b	2
Bawa (2004) [23]	India	17 items b	4
		17 items b	3
Saffu and Walker (2005) [42]	Russia	17 items b	2
Upadhyay and Singh (2006) [94]	India	17 items b	4
Chryssochoidis et al. (2007) [95]	Greece	17 items b	2
Hsu and Nien (2008) [69]	Taipei (China)	10 items a	2
	Shangai (China)	10 items a	2
Khan and Rizvi (2008) [24]	India	17 items b	4
Wei et al. (2009) [96]	China	17 items b	2
Ramayah et al. (2011) [58]	Malaysia	17 items b	2
Singh and Dhiman (2012) [97]	India	17 items b	4
Strehlau et al. (2012) [41]	Brazil	17 items b	3
Wanninayake and Chovancová (2012) [98]	Czech Republic	17 items c	4
Jiménez et al. (2014) [6]	Germany	17 items b	2
Weber et al. (2015) [49]	USA	17 items c	2
Cazacu (2016) [99]	Moldova	17 items b	4
Ghani and Mat (2017) [28]	Malaysia	17 items b	2

Source: Own elaboration. ^a Not specified in the study; ^b 7-point Likert scale; ^c 5-point Likert scale.

What is truly unique about these works is that all the dimensions are interpreted very differently by their authors, and even when they do coincide, the items they include are not the same. For this reason, we can find the “Patriotism” dimension in the works of Marcoux et al. (1997) [7], Hsu and Nien (2008) [69], Wanninayake and Chovancová (2012) [98], and Weber et al. (2015) [49], yet, while the first case is comprised of 4 items, the second work features 8, the third contains 6, and the last has 12. Another example is that of “Soft ethnocentrism”, which appears in Chryssochoidis et al. (2007) [95], including 8 items, and in Ramayah et al. (2011) [58], featuring 7. Among all the different works reviewed, the various authors identify more than 15 different dimensions (e.g., protectionism, hard ethnocentrism, animosity, and xenophobia).

Faced with this dilemma presented by the literature, and with the conviction that it is not merely the result of chance, it is necessary to stop and determine what causes the scale’s highly asymmetric behavior. As a result, we must consider two key questions. Firstly, what does CETSCALE actually set out to measure? Secondly, can only one single interpretation be derived from the scale, or, on the contrary, is it possible that the scale allows different readings, thus explaining its multidimensionality?

With regard to the first question, it is important to highlight that the scale designed by Shimp and Sharma (1987) [1] does not expressly analyze ethnocentrism from a sociological or psychological perspective, which was done by Summer in 1906 [100]. CETSCALE considers an economic version of ethnocentrism with the aim of analyzing the emotional implications that purchasing foreign products may have for consumers, that is, buying imported goods. As highlighted by Sharma (2015) [59], CETSCALE consist of items that mostly represent the socio-normative and economic issues related to the American consumers’ general response to foreign and American-made products.

This economic point of view taken by the authors is strictly reflected in the aspects included among the 17 items in the scale. In this sense, for example, it can be observed how items 6, 11 and 17 allude directly to the negative consequences that the purchase of foreign products has on a country’s unemployment. As for items 12 and 15, they refer to the convenience of establishing policies to levy tariffs and taxes on foreign products to protect domestic ones. Finally, items 2, 10, and 16 attempt to present a favorable attitude towards foreign products, yet only from the point of view that, at times, a country may experience product shortage and the needs for certain goods and services must be fulfilled. Therefore, this economic version of ethnocentrism that is represented in CETSCALE considers different points of view to justify possible consumer behavior.

In addition, it is precisely the aspect just mentioned that provides an answer to the second question. Evidently, the geopolitical situation of a country, along with its economic development, can condition the perception of its inhabitants regarding the foreign origin of different goods and services. This phenomenon generates feelings of acceptance or rejection that most likely transcend mere economic aspects (e.g., sharing a common language or not, the possible existence of war conflicts in the past or disputes over scarce natural resources). In fact, an individual can be very ethnocentric in relation to foreign products belonging to a specific product category (e.g., automobiles) and, in contrast, highly in favor of other product categories that come from the same foreign country (e.g., wines). As highlighted by Sharma, Shimp, and Shin (1995) [101], consumer ethnocentrism is a “trait-like property of individual personalities” that may influence consumers’ attitudes and behavior towards domestic vs. foreign products, but is a different construct of both of them.

As for other aspects, the socio-demographic and economic characteristics of the consumers themselves must also be taken into consideration, precisely as suggested in recent research (Alsughayir, 2013) [102] on the relationship between consumption and adverse attitudes towards imports. Studies in this line have found that such ethnocentric behavior is more common among older people, women, people with a low education level, and those with a low income level. It is also frequent among individuals that display a lack of receptiveness to other cultures, strong patriotism, high nationalism, and a degree of conservatism [4,71,101,103,104,105]. Nonetheless, all these aspects are linked to the sample selection and, thus, can condition final results.

Indeed, as highlighted by Yoo and Donthu (2005) [106], although globalization has opened the doors to all markets and, in turn, afforded the possibility to obtain products of higher quality or lower price, there still exists rejection of foreign products by consumers for various reasons. These explanations are: (1) a lack a harmony with consumer tastes or needs, (2) a degree of animosity towards the country where products come from due to current political conflicts or unhealed wounds from the past, effectively limiting product penetration in the target market [71,79,107] and, (3) despite recognizing the quality of foreign products, the consumer directly refuses to buy them because they prefer the domestic product.

However, many of these aspects seem to fall outside the concept of consumer ethnocentrism that CETSCALE contemplates. Thus, according to Sharma (2015) [59], it is not clear whether the consumer ethnocentrism construct, as conceptualized and operationalized by Shimp and Sharma (1987) [1], adequately represents the conceptual definition of ethnocentrism.

Therefore, all these approaches that contemplate both a non-unidimensional behavior of CETSCALE and an incomplete interpretation of ethnocentrism transferred to scale, have led to new research that has reconceptualized consumer ethnocentrism. In this sense, the recent scales proposed by Siagmanka and Balbanis (2015) [67] and Sharma (2015) [59] represent the necessary revision that the literature had been demanding for a number of years.

3. CEESCALE and CES: Two Alternative Proposals to Study Consumer Ethnocentrism

Undoubtedly, CETSCALE is the most widely utilized scale in the literature for analyzing the ethnocentric behavior of consumers. Moreover, it has been validated in numerous works in which both the internal consistency of the scale and its unidimensionality prevailed. Nonetheless, in recent years, a large number of studies in the literature have emerged that question its unidimensional nature, and in turn, its universality. The trend suggests that CETSCALE behaves differently when examined outside of the United States, the geographic region for which it was designed. For this reason, Thelen et al. (2006) [9] warn researchers about the trap of assuming that the scales utilized for one country or culture can be applied in other countries or cultures.

In short, although the original conceptualization of CETSCALE maintains that consumer ethnocentrism possesses a dimension linked to the morality of buying foreign products, we must also bear in mind that research on social ethnocentrism suggests that the concept is broader and encompasses more than only one dimension [108,109,110]. This deduction has since been confirmed by market studies that have revealed the scale’s multidimensionality [6,69].

Therefore, it is mainly this multidimensionality, as stated by Siamagka and Balbanis (2015) [67], which lead authors in the literature to observe a need to conceptually reexamine consumer ethnocentrism, in addition to modifying how it is measured. Several approaches, whose scope reaches beyond mere theoretical reflection, have been expressed in the elaboration of new scales. Two such examples for studying ethnocentrism are CEESCALE, proposed by Siamagka and Balbanis (2015) [67] and CES, proposed by Sharma (2015) [59], with the aim of helping researchers to identify consumers’ behavioral intentions with greater accuracy.

3.1. CEESCALE: Consumer Ethnocentrism Extended Scale

CEESCALE is comprised of 17 items but, unlike CETSCALE, it is distributed among five different dimensions: (1) Prosociality (items 1–5); (2) Cognition (items 6–8); (3) Insecurity (items 9–11); (4) Reflexiveness (items 12–14) and, (5) Habituation (items 15–17) (see Table 4).

Table 4. Original CEESCALE.

Nº	Item
	Prosociality
1	Buying British goods helps me maintain my British identity.
2	I believe that purchasing British goods should be a moral duty of every British citizen.
3	It always makes me feel good to support our products.
4	A real Briton should always back British products.
5	British people should always consider British workers when making their purchase decisions.
	Cognition
6	When it comes to British products, I do not need further information to assess their quality, the country of origin is sufficient signal of high quality for me.
7	British goods are better than imported goods.
8	British products are made to high standards and no other country can exceed them.
	Insecurity
9	Increased imports result in greater levels of unemployment in this country.
10	Buying foreign products is a threat to the domestic economy.
11	Job Losses in this country are the result of increased importation of foreign goods.
	Reflexiveness
12	I would he convinced to buy domestic goods if a campaign was launched in the mass media promoting British goods.
13	If British people are made aware of the impact on the economy of foreign product consumption, they will be more willing to purchase domestic goods.
14	I would stop buying foreign products if the British government launched campaigns to make people aware of the positive impact of domestic goods consumption on the British economy.
	Habituation
15	I am buying British products out of habit
16	I prefer buying the British products because I am more familiar with them
17	I am buying British because I am following the consumption patterns as these were passed to me by my older family members

Source: Siamagka and Balbanis (2015) [67].

This scale was designed and validated with English consumers from various regions of the country, and its information was obtained via online questionnaires. In order to study ethnocentrism, the authors analyzed consumer rejection towards purchasing four categories of products from two European countries, Germany and Italy. They found greater rejection towards products of Italian origin.

The description that the authors make of the five dimensions is as follows: the prosociality dimension considers ethnocentrism linked to love and sacrifice for the homeland. Cognition relates to the ethnocentrism of those who see the world through ethnic groups. The items related to insecurity describe consumer ethnocentrism as the perception that consumers have of the threat foreign products pose to the economy and domestic employment. As for the reflexiveness dimension, it considers the ethnocentrism caused by biased information that is received repeatedly, leading to rejection towards certain products. Finally, habituation focuses on the fact that ethnocentrism is generated by a repeated behavior linked to morality.

The results establish a superior predictive validity for CEESCALE in respect of CETSCALE, offering greater reliability to marketing experts when identifying ethnocentric consumers and predicting their responses towards national and foreign products. For this reason, in the empirical analysis performed by Siamagka and Balbanis (2015) [67], CEESCALE presents more robust parameters than CETSCALE to explain the ethnocentric attitude of consumers. The development of this scale may have well marked a turning point in the future application of the scale created by Shimp and Sharma in 1987 [1], especially because it gives an answer to the multidimensional conception of ethnocentrism. In fact, CEESCALE is already being utilized, as can be seen in recent works by Ding et al. (2017) [111], for China and Greece, and Paylan et al. (2017) [112] for Syria.

3.2. CES: Revised Consumer Ethnocentrism Scale

CES is comprised of 18 items but, unlike CETSCALE, it is distributed among three different dimensions: (1) Affective reaction (6 items); (2) Cognition bias (6 items); and (3) Behavioral preference (6 items) (see Table 5).

Table 5. Original CES.

Nº	Item
	Affective reaction
1	I love the products and services from (Home Country).
2	I am proud of the products and services from (Home Country).
3	I admire the products and services from (Home Country).
4	I feel attached to the products and services from (Home Country).
5	I hate the products and services from foreign countries.
6	I despise the products and services from foreign countries.
	Cognition bias
1	East or West, the products and services from (Home Country) are the best.
2	Products from (Home Country) are examples of best workmanship.
3	Service providers from (Home country) have the best work attitudes.
4	Products and services from foreign countries are no match for those from (Home Country).
5	(Home Country) has the hardest working people in manufacturing industry.
6	Service providers from (Home Country) are more caring than those in any foreign country.
	Behavioral preference
1	For me, it’s always the products from (Home Country) first, last and foremost.
2	If I have a choice, I would prefer buying products and services from (Home Country).
3	I prefer being served by service providers from (Home Country).
4	As far as possible, I avoid buying products and services from foreign countries.
5	I often refuse to buy a product or service because it is from a foreign country.
6	I would much rather not buy a product or service, than buy one from a foreign country.

Source: Sharma (2015) [59].

The scale was designed and validated with consumers from four countries: China, India, UK, and USA. The three sub-scales of CES, and the full scale of 18 items, showed high reliability (Cronbach’s alpha between 0.80 and 0.86). Moreover, the average scores for each sub-scale were found to be evenly distributed with adequate variance. Similar results were obtained with individual samples from all four countries.

CES uses the ABC structure for attitudes developed by LaPiere (1934) [113], to reconceptualize consumer ethnocentrism as a three-dimensional attitude construct, which considers the affective, cognitive, and behavioral aspects. This approach is quite practical because, as highlighted by Sharma (2015) [59], consumer ethnocentrism represents an overall attitude towards domestic and foreign products and services consisting of affective reaction, cognitive bias, and behavioral preference.

The affective reaction dimension relates to an ethnocentric feeling that not only involves making a distinction between one’s own group and others but is also accompanied by suspicion and disdain for other groups. This may explain why highly ethnocentric consumers show an affinity for domestic products, and aversion for foreign products, regardless of their respective quality. On the other hand, the cognitive bias dimension (similar to the cognition dimension of CEESCALE), considers a favorable perception of domestic products compared with the imported products and services. Finally, the behavioral preference dimension goes beyond the preference for purchase of domestic products over imported products and extends its scope to other behavioral aspects such as willingness to try, repeat purchase, and positive word of mouth.

As highlighted by Sharma (2015) [59], CES significantly improves on CETSCALE by reconceptualizing it as a multidimensional construct. Moreover, despite its more complex three-dimensional structure, CES has only 18 items, which is quite similar to Shimp and Sharma’s (1987) 17-items scale, and yet it provides a much richer view of this complex socio-psychological construct.

4. Discussion

CETSCALE was designed to reflect an economic version of ethnocentrism, with the aim of analyzing the emotional implications that the purchase of foreign products may have for the consumer.

Although its application for over more than three decades has in many cases presented a one-dimensional structure, it is no less true that in recent years, numerous replications have also confirmed multidimensional behavior, providing a vast number of interpretations. In addition, such findings are also supported by numerous works that have made conscientious use of the items that comprise the scale, seeking readings other than ethnocentrism. Logically, this body of evidence has drawn attention to the need to review and redefine the concept of consumer ethnocentrism, exploring new constructs for its measurement.

The need to consider other approaches to ethnocentrism that CETSCALE ignores or simply fails to clearly contemplate, and that allow us to reflect perspectives more in keeping with the real meanings of the concept, has led to the development of other scales that are in line with what the literature has been claiming. In this sense, CEESCALE and CES offer alternative constructs to CETSCALE, proposing new scales that contemplate a more complete vision of consumer ethnocentrism by including different perfectly defined dimensions, which will make it possible to compare the results of different studies.

Together with these new approaches; however, it must be borne in mind that, in parallel, literature has also understood this multidimensional structure through the fragmented use of CETSCALE. A practice that has given rise to subscales, serving as new dimensions, consisting of 4, 5, and 6 items that in turn, have been used in subsequent research.

However, despite the robustness with which CEESCALE and CES analyzes ethnocentric behavior and the increased ease it offers when interpreting the feelings of consumers towards domestic and foreign products, thanks to its inclusion of different dimensions, there are two final points related to CETSCALE that must absolutely not be overlooked.

Firstly, based on the existence of enough empirical evidence demonstrating the usefulness of CETSCALE for studying consumer ethnocentrism (i.e., version CET-17 and CET-10), any attempt seeking to measure this concept using reduced and selected fragments of the scale should not be considered valid nor mentioned as such in the literature as they represent biased and partial interpretations of the concept. In these cases, for future research, a suitable alternative may be to consider any of the dimensions included in CEESCALE or CES, individually. Secondly, given that evidence has also shown CETSCALE can offer different interpretations of consumer ethnocentrism with no need to manipulate the original versions [6,58,69,95] rigorous application of the initial scales (CET-17 and CET-10) should prevail over interested adaptations of the scale. What is more, the validity of results obtained not be questioned, even if these findings do confirm the scale’s multidimensionality.

Therefore, to the extent that empirical evidence is still incipient in relation to CEESCALE or CES as scales that may be a true alternative to CETSCALE, the use of the scale designed by Shimp and Sharma (1987) [1] will remain the main reference, although accepting the legitimacy of the results whether they have a one-dimensional or multidimensional behavior. However, in the case of multidimensional results, the fact that the interpretation of the items comprising each factor depends on each researcher will greatly complicate the task of comparing the results of different studies. This aspect is undoubtedly the main problem that the new scales can help to resolve, and it is precisely what will make their use more prevalent in future research.

5. Conclusions

The objective of this study was to review the literature to evaluate the prevalence of CETSCALE—the most widely used scale for measuring consumer ethnocentrism—with the objective of questioning its usage when dealing with multidimensional behavior and when fragmented versions are applied, which continues to occur in more recent studies [114]. We believe that both CEESCALE and CES offer adequate solutions by proposing an analysis of consumer ethnocentrism behavior based on using clearly defined dimensions. The structure of both scales would facilitate, above all, the comparison of results from different studies.

As a proposal for a future line of research, we believe it would be necessary to analyze these three scales more in depth, weighing their advantages and drawbacks, in which case our results could serve as a guide for any researcher wishing to address this field of study in the future. Firstly, for example, a comparison could be made between the wording of the items in the three scales (e.g., item 4 of CETSCALE is very similar to 1 of CEESCALE and 13 of CES). Secondly, an evaluation could be conducted to observe the similarities and differences between the dimensions of CEESCALE and CES using the interpretations considered in studies that have featured a multidimensional behavior of CETSCALE. For example, when Hsu and Nien (2008) [69], Weber et al. (2015) [49], and Cazacu (2016) [99] refer to “protectionism”, although the resulting factor is comprised of different items in each of the works, said dimension is quite similar to the “habituation” dimension of CEESCALE and “behavioral preference” of CES. Finally, an assessment could be made of the feasibility of using the adapted versions included in Table 2.

As new scales begin to be used in future research, as already occurs with CEESCALE [111,112], it will be possible to determine in which fields of study consumer ethnocentrism it is preferable to utilize each particular scale. For example, this aspect could become useful for analyzing the development of the nation branding [115], migratory phenomena [112,116], or the effect of country of origin [6] on ethnocentrism behavior.