Consumers‟ attitudes towards purchasing either foreign
or local products have been a matter of debate. Therefore the
objective of this study was to investigate the determinants of
consumers‟ attitudes on imported products in Tanzania by
exploring factors which attract Tanzanian consumers to purchase
imported products. This study employed cross sectional design.
Data were collected in Dodoma Municipal in which selfadministered
questionnaires were used to collect the required
information. The study randomly sampled 200 respondents who
included 92 business men/women, 60 students and 48 servants.
The data obtained were analyzed using MS – Excel computer
software.
The results showed that Tanzanian consumers‟ attitudes on
imported products were heavily influenced by the sense of proud,
advertising and marketing, local market destructions, consumers‟
awareness about the imported products, import brand name,
group reference and unavailable local substitutes. These variables
have affected the Tanzanian consumers to purchase foreign
products differently.
The study recommends that local companies should
emphasize on the use of promotion, marketing, labelling and
brand names that will attract and make local consumers to be
proud when consuming local products. Also local companies
should search for good strategies like making local consumers
more patriotic and aware about their local products specifically
on the matter of standard, quality and the use of group influence
to attract consumers to use local products. In addition, the
government should strengthen local companies‟ production by
providing subsidies and lower their product tax in such a way
that local companies will be attracted to produce more instead of
being agencies of foreign countries products. Lastly the
government should implement regulations and policies that
restrict importation of products that are locally produced. This
will eventually promote the domestic production of goods and
services.