Studying Consumer Ethnocentrism as a Factor for Depressed Rates of Black Entrepreneurship

Abstract

The rate of black entrepreneurship has lagged the national average for decades. Rather than look at financial factors, as most of the literature that has explored the disparity has done, we examine the role of consumer ethnocentrism and the different views black and white consumers have about black and white entrepreneurs. Using t-test results based on the responses of 747 respondents, we found support for two hypotheses that indicate that black respondents did not demonstrate higher levels of consumer ethnocentrism than white respondents toward a black-owned business, while white respondents did demonstrate consumer ethnocentrism toward a white-owned business. This paper discusses the implications of our results, offers new insights into the lagging rate of black entrepreneurship, and discusses future directions for research.