Journal of Marketing Management

Ethnicity in Car Purchase Decisions
Xin Zhao

Abstract
Ethnicity is found to play an important role in consumer’s purchase decision. However, more research is needed to broaden product category in academic research on ethnic consumption (Ogden et. al., 2004). In this paper, we analyze the impact of ethnicity in consumer choice in terms of car purchase. We approachthis question linking consumers’ ethnicity to their cars’ brand country of origin. In particular, we are interested in Asian American consumers’automotive purchasing decisions - do they drive Asian carbrands such as Honda, or Hyundai? We employ a large geographically diversified data set of registered car-dealerships in the United States and combine spatial cluster analysis, trade area analysis and regression models to identify the determinants of brand origin affinity based on socio-economic attributes across trade-areas. The results show that Asian Americans on average tend to buy Asian cars, but the affinity decreases with income, and the strength of this relationship is weaker than expected. Nonetheless, our proposed method helps finding promising new markets based on location specific attributes.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jmm.v5n2a1