Due to a crescent globalisation of the food market and demand of quality insurance by the consumers, producers and retailers have adopted strategies to certify products and increase sales. Considering the number of customers demanding some kind of certification, manufacturers and retailers are increasingly under (economic) pressure to become somehow, certified. For this and in order to ensure consumer demand for food product quality and safety, a growing attention has been placed on labelling strategies dealing with traceability and origin certification. Apart from the conventional country of origin general labelling – Produced in Portugal, retail chains developed their own labelling strategies based on the origin of food as it is the case of the “Continente Clube de Produtores (Continente Producers Club) Both cues -“Produce in Portugal” and “Continente Producers club”- are used to differentiate quality in various product categories, applying to the consumer’s ethnocentrism character. The consumers ethnocentrism and how they evaluate and differentiate both the above labels is not yet fully studied in Portugal. The aim of this work is to use the theory of Planned Behaviour to evaluate how Ethnocentrism influence the purchase intention of Portuguese labelled food products. It will be tested the moderating effects of Product Category and label (retail “Continente producers club”/conventional Country of origin labelled) and product category (“vice” or “virtue”) on actual purchase behaviour. With this work, it is expected to shed some light into the way how consumers evaluate food under country of origin direct or indirect label cues. This could present some guidelines to adjust consumer communication for both producers and retailers.

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Consumer behaviour,Purchase intention,Consumer ethnocentrism,Portugal,Certified food products,Retail,Theory of planned behaviour