Tokyo Fuji University

Rašković M., Ding Z., Hirose M., Žabkar V., Fam K.

The article addresses consumer ethnocentrism (CET) and consumer decision-making styles (CDMS) of young-adult consumers. We explore the level of between- and within-regional differences in CDMS in East Asia and Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on Social identity theory, we explore various “constellations” of young-adult consumers with regards to their CDMS and assess to what extent can we discriminate between various consumer segments based on CET. We test hypotheses on matched samples' survey data from China, Japan, Slovenia and Croatia. Our study confirms low ethnocentric tendencies of young-adult consumers at regional, country and segment levels. We identify diverse CDMS archetypes between and within the respective countries and regions. Inter-regional differences are not bigger than country-level differences. We find weak pair-wise correlations between CET and some CDMS only in the case of Central and Eastern Europe.

Cheng H., Takata S., Kawanaka T., Ohno T.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) advertising is still not widespread due to uncertainty about its profitability for business, though awareness of the SDGs has been remarkably raised among corporations and consumers recently. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to analyze the influence of general SDGs advertising on consumers’ ethical consumption intentions. This study proposes an integrative ethical consumption model in which new determinants related to rational consumption and SDGs advertising are included. The proposed ethical consumption model was validated by analyzing responses from 350 consumers in Japan using structural equation modeling (SEM), and the results demonstrate that ethical consumption intentions are constructed by attitudes toward ethical consumption, together with subjective norms and feasibility assessments. Moreover, this study found that, as a consumer views SDGs advertisements more frequently, they show greater ethical interest, which further increases their ethical consumption intentions. However, no significant evidence reveals that it can also improve the level of knowledge of the SDGs. The findings of this study contribute to the theoretical understanding of ethical consumption from the corporation aspect, providing quantitative evidence for corporations to better allocate resources toward profitable SDGs advertising that aligns with customer behavior.

Ang L., Buzeta C., Hirose M., van Loggerenberg M.J., van Noort G., Uribe R., Voorveld H.A.

Sato E., Matsuda K.

Matsuda K., Sato E.

Matsuda K., Sato E.

In this experiment, we tried to measure personality by reaction time (RT) to stimuli of personality trait words. There were interindividual and intraindividual differences in the factors that caused the reaction time to fluctuate. The intraindividual differences for personality trait words were caused by changes due to circumstances for the same participant. The increased stimulus reaction time (sRT) model for simple reaction time was used as an index to indicate personality traits. As a result, participants could be classified into two major hierarchical clusters. The participants in Cluster 1 showed innovative dominance. The participants in Cluster 2 were obedient and conservative. The independent variable was measured by the physiological index using sRT for classify the participants. Participants in Cluster 2 had a reduced stress response to the experiment and showed a tendency to be compliant. Moreover, immediately after the RT measurement session with a laptop computer started, participants in Cluster 1 showed decreased HEG and increased amylase values and had a somewhat negative attitude. The physiological dependent variable were measured by using salivary amylase and hemoencephalography (HEG). And, the psychological dependent variable was the Big Five personality inventory. All of them ware using to verify the participant’s classification. Participants in Cluster 2 had significantly higher conscientiousness than those in Cluster 1. Therefore, we suggest that it is possible to classify personality traits from RT by using sRT based on intraindividual differences.