Most research on the performance of foreign versus domestic brands in emerging markets examines dependent measures of product evaluation or purchase intention. However, consumers intending to buy a product may switch to competing brands, displaying an intention-behavior discrepancy (IBD). Drawing upon literature on country associations and dual process theory, we examine the performance of foreign versus domestic brands on IBD in emerging markets and the moderating role of prior knowledge. We conducted an intention survey followed by a post-purchase survey in the Chinese automobile and smartphone industries. We found that foreign brands have an advantage on IBD relative to domestic brands, indicating that they have the dual advantage of higher evaluations and lower IBDs.Furthermore, foreign brands' advantage on IBD is smaller for consumers with inaccurate prior knowledge, as they are more likely to systematically reprocess information and discount foreign brands' favorable country associations. For these consumers, overestimating the product reduces foreign brands' advantage to a smaller degree than underestimating it due to confirmation bias. These findings provide implications for brands in emerging markets.Keywords: foreign brands, domestic brands, intention-behavior discrepancy, prior knowledge, emerging market 3 The globalization of the marketplace has intensified competition between foreign and domestic brands. Some prior research suggests that consumers prefer foreign to domestic brands because they experience favorable feelings or affinity toward some foreign countries (Oberecker and Diamantopoulos 2011). Other research, however, finds that consumers show a home country bias that favors domestic brands, due to economic and socio-psychological motives (Feurer, Baumbach, and Woodside 2016;Verlegh 2007;Zeugner-Roth, Zabkar, and Diamantopoulos 2015). Despite the mixed findings, there is a consensus that consumers in emerging markets such as China, India, and Tunisia generally prefer foreign brands (especially those from more developed countries) over domestic brands (Batra et al. 2000;Essoussi and Merunka 2007). In these markets, foreign brands from developed countries are perceived to have higher quality and higher symbolic value, and signal a western lifestyle that consumers prefer (Guo 2013;Zhou, Yang, and Hui 2010). This may explain why some Chinese brands use foreign-sounding names to attract local consumers (Melnyk, Klein, and Völckner 2012). For example, the leading Chinese appliance brand Galanz uses a Germanic name to be associated with the high durability and quality of German appliances.There is, however, still a research gap when it comes to the performance of foreign versus domestic brands in emerging markets. In this body of literature, most research examines product evaluation or purchase intention (i.e., what consumers say) and ignores the subsequent purchase behavior (i.e., what consumers do) and the possible discrepancy between intention and behavior. Allman et al. (2016) reviewe...
While research on self-gift consumer behaviour (SGCB) has shown evidence of the importance of this behaviour in Western cultures, particularly that of the United States, there is no understanding of self-gift giving in collectivist cultures. Given the self-oriented nature of this behaviour, research is required to address its possible differences in a collectivist society. In this paper, we use personal interviews with consumers to establish the existence of SGCB in China, and further to compare motivations for and the emotions associated with SGCB in positive-related contexts in the UK and mainland China, with a particular focus on the Chinese side. We also address the nature of this behaviour for Chinese participants. Findings indicate that SGCB is less self-oriented for the Chinese than for the British, and suggest that academics should reflect on the meaning of this behaviour in non-Western countries. Implications from these findings for practitioners are also presented.
Using data provided by a ride-hailing platform, this paper examines the factors that affect taxi driver response behavior to ride-hailing requests. The empirical investigation from a driver’s perspective is of great importance for ride-hailing service providers, given that approximately 40% of the hailing requests receive no response from any driver. To comprehensively understand taxi driver response behavior, we use a rich dataset to generate variables related to the spatio-temporal supply-demand intensities, the economic incentives, the requests’ and the drivers’ characteristics. The results show that drivers are more likely to respond to requests with economic incentives (especially a firm subsidy), and those with a lower spatio-temporal demand intensity or a higher spatio-temporal supply intensity. In addition, drivers are more likely to respond to requests involving rides covering a greater geographical distance and to those with a smaller number of repeated submissions. The drivers’ characteristics, namely, the number of requests received and the number of requests responded, however, have relatively little impacts on their response probability to the current request. Our findings contribute to the related literature and provide managerial implications for ride-hailing service providers.
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