Advertising Nationalism: How Effective Are Advertisements Appealing to Consumer Ethnocentrism? – The Cases of Electric Vehicles and Smartphones in a Developing Southeast Asian Country

Abstract

While CETSCALE has frequently been tested and applied in Western contexts, it has received little attention in Asian countries, particularly Vietnam, a developing country that has one of the highest economic growth rates worldwide (Dabla-Norris & Zhang, 2021). Hence, the current study employs CETSCALE to examine the effects of nationalistic advertisements on consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention for the domestic VinFast electric vehicles and Bphone smartphones among Vietnamese millennial consumers. Results based on 206 survey responses (N = 206) suggested the predictive powers of respondents’ attention and exposure to nationalistic advertisements on their perceptions of the advertisements which, in turn, predicted consumer ethnocentrism level and domestic buying intention. Perceptions of nationalistic advertisements particularly played a quintessential role in predicting consumers' ethnocentrism and, eventually, buying intentions for domestic EVs and smartphones. The study is one of the first attempts to examine the influence of nationalistic advertisements (e.g., exposure and attention), in relation to CETSCALE, on buying intentions, looking at two different product categories (i.e., EVs and smartphones). Furthermore, it contributed to the globalization and de-Westernization of media mass communication scholarship by testing CETSCALE in the understudied context of Vietnam. Theoretical and empirical implications, for instance, employment strategies for nationalistic advertising, were provided.