Resumen de Influence of ethnocentrism on consumer preference patterns: the case of olive oil in Portugal

Rodolfo Bernabéu Cañete , Fátima Oliveira, Adrian Rabadán, Mónica Díaz Donate

• Consumers are influenced by a multitude of stimuli, which affect their behaviour and guide their pref-erences towards a particular product. Ethnocentric tendencies are one of these stimuli, understood as consumers’ positive attitudes towards goods produced in their own region rather than those from other regions. From this perspective, the current study describes ethnocentric tendencies and identifies olive oil consumer preferences from Lisbon (Portugal). CETSCALE and the conjoint analysis technique have been used for this purpose. Results show that Portuguese olive oil consumers exhibit a strong ethnocentric ten-dency but the price attribute is also key. Nonetheless, there exists a less ethnocentric segment, on which foreign business strategy can be focused. On this segment, consumers attach lower relative importance to the price and higher relative importance to differentiated-quality parameters: oil type (extra virgin), bottle (glass) and production system (organic).