Consumer motives for buying regional products: the REGIOSCALE

Abstract

Consumers are increasingly turning towards regional products (RP). The Consumer Ethnocentric Scale (CETSCALE) has been widely used to examine consumer motives for buying national and RPs. However, recent studies highlight that the CETSCALE alone does not adequately explain consumers’ intention to purchase RPs. This study adopted a mixed-method approach to provide an in-depth understanding of consumers’ motivations to buy RPs. A preliminary qualitative study based on twenty semi-structured interviews with German consumers, followed by two surveys, enabled the validation of a scale including three main drivers of consumers’ decision to purchase RPs: perceived eco-friendliness, superior quality, and territorial identity. The newly built Regional Scale (i.e., REGIOSCALE) and the CETSCALE were used to assess their explanatory power of consumers’ decision to purchase RPs. The findings reveal that the REGIOSCALE has a more substantial explanatory power of consumer decision to buy RPs than the CETSCALE.