Chinese Wine Consumers’ Product Evaluation: Effects of Product Involvement, Ethnocentrism, Product Experience and Antecedents

This research provides nuanced insights from a consumer-centric behavioural psychology perspective, by developing a theoretically grounded motivational process model of product evaluation, viewed through a country-of-origin (COO) lens, incorporating the focal constructs of product involvement, product knowledge, consumer ethnocentrism (CET) and antecedents related to wine buying in China. An online survey of 934 consumers across China in a range of 12 tier-1 and tier-2 cities investigates the effects of several independent variables on COO product category evaluation. The findings provide valuable contrasting insights between evaluations of products originating from developed economies (France and Australia) and a transitional economy (China), the home country. We validate a 10-item version of the CETSCALE and apply multiple linear regression (MLR) modelling to test the hypothesised relationships. We further contribute by examining both main and interaction effects of the empirically enhanced model. We conclude that CET, product involvement, product purchase experience and, travel exposure significantly impact COO product evaluations, through actual product purchase experience, while product purchase frequency does not. CET also has a significant mediating effect on product evaluation through both involvement and actual product purchasing experience. Gender has direct effects on CET and product evaluation, as does household income on product evaluation.