Ishak Awaluddin

The study intends to find out motivation behind domestic consumers’ decision to buy domestic products by focusing on the role of social identity and empathy. Social identity helps to explain the position of local identity towards local products amidst myriad foreign products, and empathy helps to grasp the role of empathetic feeling towards local products that look inferior under foreign products domination. It does so by integrating theories of social identity, empathy and planned behavior. The novelty of this study lies on exploration of empathy in the relationship between national identity and domestic product purchasing intention, which is so far absent in management literature. Determination of sample size follows the rule of ten multiplications to indicator number. The respondents are consumers in a mall in Kendari. It applies convenient technique for sampling. It applies Smart PLS for data analysis. The results should be that empathy affects domestic purchasing intention and so does national identity on domestic purchasing intention, meaning that empathy partially mediates the effect of national identity on domestic product purchasing intention. Meanwhile, ethnocentrism leads to domestic purchasing intention, while national identity has significant effects on domestic product purchasing intention and ethnocentrism.