Relations Between Consumer Ethnocentrism, Cosmopolitanism and Materialism: Lithuanian Consumer Profile

As the world becomes smaller and the boundaries between countries erase, consumer behaviour is also changing. The prevalent opinion exists that globalization accelerates the rise of a global consumption culture and most of consumers tend to be cosmopolitan. Still others argue that globalization has reverse impact on consumer behaviour, that it motivates people to resist global forces. The interesting aspect of analysis involve exploration of relations among consumer ethnocentrism (CET), cosmopolitanism (COS) and materialism (MAT), taking the latter one as standing for the view that global culture dismisses the importance of CET as well as COS, and local/global brands consumption is dependent more on the level of materialism. Analysis of existing theoretical and empirical evidences allows distinguishing three areas in determining the relations between CET, COS and MAT. Some authors suggest that all three constructs are interrelated, cosmopolitanism and materialism being antecedents to consumer ethnocentrism. Others claim that cosmopolitanism is an antecedent to ethnocentrism, but the materialism is not related with neither of them. Still others argue that all those constructs should be analysed independently. Therefore, the aim of this article is to investigate the relations between consumer ethnocentrism, cosmopolitanism and materialism, while defining the Lithuanian consumer profile.