diff --git a/tests/test_utils.py b/tests/test_utils.py
index 2b4401b0..8d5ade9c 100644
--- a/tests/test_utils.py
+++ b/tests/test_utils.py
@@ -282,7 +282,7 @@ class TestGuessJSONUTF:
             ('utf-32-le', 'utf-32')
         ))
     def test_guess_by_bom(self, encoding, expected):
-        data = '\ufeff{}'.encode(encoding)
+        data = u'\ufeff{}'.encode(encoding)
         assert guess_json_utf(data) == expected