TITLE:
How Do Consumers Adopt Imported Products in an Era of Product Overcrowding?
AUTHORS:
Miguel Sahagun, Arturo Z. Vasquez-Parraga
KEYWORDS:
Adoption Process of Imported Products, Imported Product, Purchase Intention, Social Influence, Prior Product Knowledge
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.7 No.7,
December
7,
2017
ABSTRACT: When individuals decide to adopt imported products, they
associate these products with one or more places. Thus, consumers are likely to
think about the new cultures, ideas, and behaviors associated with these
places. When adopting imported products some consumers seek some type of
novelty without altering existing decisional and/or behavioral structures
whereas other consumers seek novelty to create new consumption situations.
Nonetheless, current research has failed to explain how determinant the
influence of the product’s place and the process of adopting this product are
on consumer’s purchase intention. Therefore, this research analyzes: 1) the
influence of the product’s place market development level on consumers’
purchase intention, 2) the process followed by consumers during the adoption of
imported products, 3) the effect this process has on consumers’ purchase
intention, and 4) the moderating effect of social influence and prior product
knowledge on this process. A survey of 491 participants from Mexico and the
United States revealed: 1) that significant differences in consumers’ purchase
intention are due to the product’s place market development level; 2) that the
process followed by consumers during the adoption of imported products
represents an explanation chain sequentially described by the consumer
attitudes toward that imported product, the behavioral intention to use that
imported product, and the selection, evaluation and acceptance of that imported
product; 3) that this adoption process has a determinant effect on consumers’
purchase intention for imported products; and 4) that social influence and
prior product knowledge also influence consumers purchase intention for
imported products. Overall, this research makes a theoretical contribution in
three particular ways: 1) by providing an enriched and customized framework to
fully understand the product adoption process of consumers when deciding to
purchase imported products, 2) by identifying the differences on consumers’
purchase intention due to different levels of market development associated to
both, the imported product and the consumer, and 3) by proposing that the
product adoption process represents an explanation chain.