The number of international students in the United States has increased, with almost 900,000 students in 2014. Chinese students were a large part of the growth, comprising 30.4% of the international student population. International students spend more than 24 billion dollars each year to the U.S. economy. Therefore, this group should be considered as an interesting and profitable segment for marketers to invest in understanding their shopping behavior. This study investigated factors affecting Chinese students' choices of grocery stores and loyalty and whether their degree of ethnic identity and acculturation influenced grocery store choice and loyalty. Both online and offline questionnaires were distributed and the final sample with usable data consisted of 162 Chinese students studying in the U.S. Results showed that ethnic identity had a positive effect on the importance of ethnic store product assortment, cleanliness, and ethnic store loyalty. On the other hand, acculturation was positively related to the importance of mainstream store price, location, and mainstream store loyalty. Managerial implications and limitations were also discussed.
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