Studies have revealed that consumers' ethnocentric tendencies play a role in purchasing decisions (Shimp & Sharma 1987). While most studies have used telephone surveys or experimental treatments, few have measured actual purchase behavior. The study reported here is a shopping mall intercept survey, therefore actual purchase behavior was measured. Research findings indicate that consumers who display strong ethnocentric tendencies were no more likely to purchase American-made products than those who were less ethnocentric. Furthermore, these consumers were not any more likely than less ethnocentric consumers to be aware of the country of origin of their purchases. Therefore, although consumers may claim that they want to purchase American-made products, in reality, they do not carry out the actions to support this claim.
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McLain et al. (1992) studied this question.