The authors find that U.S. consumers hold contradictory notions of what characterizes a global brand beyond its wide recognition, availability, and standardization across markets. In particular, they find that the association of brand globality with higher quality is not as strong as the literature has proposed and that affect directly influences how people perceive global brands. The initial results imply that previous research on globality effects may have confounded brand globality and brand strength and that the latter is responsible for the quality effect. A follow-up study shows that for most consumers, brand globality is associated with positive affect and that this affect is also reflected among consumers who are explicitly against global brands. The authors conclude that response to global brands is driven more by affect and less by cognition.Marketing and brand managers in companies whose market offerings span multiple cultures and borders are faced with the difficult task of coordinating resources and strategies to serve broad global markets profitably. In addition to this challenge, many are unsure about what the globality of their brands means to their consumers or even whether this globality is a brand attribute that should be mentioned or perhaps concealed in marketing communications. Academic research on the topic is modestly informative. Several recent studies have provided some evidence of a positive relationship between the perceived globality of a brand and its perceptions of quality (Holt, Quelch, and Taylor 2004), prestige (Steenkamp, Batra, and Alden 2003), and esteem (Johansson and Ronkainen 2004). Even when other factors are controlled for, researchers have argued that this global brand effect influences brand purchase intentions through higher quality and status ratings (Steenkamp, Batra, and Alden 2003).What the global brand effect actually consists of is still unclear. Holt, Quelch, and Taylor (2004) suggest two important factors, global myth and social responsibility, whereas others suggest cosmopolitanism and the desire to belong to a global community (Alden, Steenkamp, and Batra 1999;Kapferer 1997). Attractive as such benefits might be, it is difficult to find evidence that consumers actually consider globality as captured by these dimensions in their marketplace choices. There is strong evidence that individual consumers in developing countries choose global brands regardless of merit for conspicuous consumption or aspirational reasons (Batra et al. 2000;Holt, Quelch, and Taylor 2004). In more mature markets, however, it is likely that "the consumer does not buy a global brand per se, but on the contrary, individualistic