The effect of ethnocentrism, advertising appeal, perceived quality and price perception on actual purchase of proton cars

The automotive sector in Malaysia has grown well over the last few decades due to the success of the national automotive policy (NAP) and the rapid development of the country's
economy. Proton is a proud Malaysian car brand that is directly involved in the automotive industry and has become a leading brand that received a warm welcome for many years. However, from 2013 to 2018, Proton’s sales have been steadily declining from year to year. The main objectives of this study were to evaluate the relationship between ethnocentrism, advertising appeal, perceived quality and price perception with the actual purchase of Proton cars and to examine whether perceived quality and price perception mediate the relationship between ethnocentrism and advertising appeal with the actual purchase of Proton cars. The sampling procedure of multi-stage random sampling was used to determine the selection of respondents comprising Malaysian Proton car owners. This study used the quantitative method by distributing a set of self-administered questionnaires. The structured questionnaire items were built based on previous studies and proved their authenticity and
reliability. 400 sets of questionnaires were distributed to respondents to complete this study. The findings revealed that all hypothesised relationships were statistically accepted except
the direct relationship between ethnocentrism and actual purchase and the direct relationship between advertising appeal and actual purchase. Even so, perceived quality and price perception fully mediated the relationship between ethnocentrism and actual purchase. The relationship between ethnocentrism and actual purchase became significant with the
intervention from perceived quality and price perception. Meanwhile, price perception competitively partially mediated the relationship between advertising appeal and the actual
purchase of Proton cars. Price perception changed the negative relationship between advertising appeal and actual purchase into a positive relationship.This study concludes with
discussions on the theoretical and practical contributions, study limitations and suggestions for future research.