Consumer Racism Scale

What it measures

Consumer racism (CR) is defined as antipathy toward a domestic ethnic minority group's products or services as a symbolic way of discriminating against that group. Ouellet (2007) distinguishes CR from related constructs: unlike consumer ethnocentrism, CR is directed at a specific ethnic minority rather than all outgroups; unlike animosity, CR reduces both product judgments and willingness to buy rather than willingness to buy alone; and unlike both, CR is more socially undesirable and therefore harder to measure. The 9-item CRS was developed and validated across three country contexts -- the United States (Hispanics as the dominant minority), Canada (French Canadians), and France (North Africans) -- using a multistudy program involving item generation from qualitative interviews with identified high-racism individuals, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and experimental validation. The scale uses generic placeholders for the target minority group, enabling adaptation across national and ethnic contexts.

Representative items

• We should support [Dominant Minority Group] in their struggle to build their own successful businesses in this country by consuming their goods and services. (R)
• [Dominant Minority Group] entrepreneurs in this country have it better than they ever had it before from consumers.
• It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if [Dominant Minority Group] would only try harder, their products and services could be just as good as ours, and I would then patronize their businesses as much as I patronize ours.

Citation

Ouellet, J.-F. (2007). Consumer racism and its effects on domestic cross-ethnic product purchase: An empirical test in the United States, Canada, and France. Journal of Marketing, 71(1), 113-128. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.71.1.113