Consumer Reshoring Sentiment and Animosity: Expanding Our Understanding of Market Responses to Reshoring

Abstract

Although an increasing body of research has focused attention on reshoring, namely, a company's decision to relocate activities back to the home-country, how and when reshoring impacts market responses remains largely understudied and requires specific theoretical and empirical consideration. Our study complements existing research on reshoring by adopting a demand-side perspective. Through multiple, experimental and survey-based studies, conducted in two countries (Italy and the US), we verified that the interplay between Consumer Reshoring Sentiment (CRS) and Consumer Animosity (CA) leads to specific emotional reactions (gratitude and relief) which, in their turn, affect relevant market responses (positive word of mouth, willingness to buy, advocacy behaviors). Our work provides interesting insights for practitioners and international managers evaluating reshoring; they can capitalize on the positive market responses to reshoring by considering both reshoring sentiments characterizing the home-country market and consumer animosity associated with tensions between the countries involved in the reshoring decision.

Heading Home? Reshoring and Sustainability Connectedness from a Home‐Country Consumer Perspective

“…Di Di Mauro et al, 2018;Gray et al, 2013;Tate et al, 2014), the consumer's viewpoint remains under-researched (Ashby, 2016;Fratocchi and Di Stefano, 2019;Moretto, Patrucco and Harland, 2020;Srai and Ané, 2016). This is surprising, because the literature affirms that consumers are increasingly demanding authentically and locally made products, and are willing to pay more for them (Collins and Weiss, 2015;Grappi, Romani and Bagozzi, 2020;Robinson and Hsieh, 2016). In a seminal study examining consumers' willingness to buy products from companies that reshore, Grappi, Romani and Bagozzi (2015) found that a company's reshoring decision positively influenced consumer attitudes towards the organisation through increased gratitude and decreased anger.…”

“…Most reshoring literature has examined the effects of reshoring on supply chains and operations management (Gray et al, 2017;McIvor and Bals, 2021;Wiesmann et al, 2017), as well as the motivators, outcomes, and barriers to reshoring (Ellram, Tate and Petersen, 2013;Fratocchi and Di Stefano, 2019). However, research from the consumer's perspective (see Grappi, Romani and Bagozzi, 2015, 2020Pal, Harper and Vellesalu, 2018) is limited (Fratocchi and Di Stefano, 2019;Grappi, Romani and Bagozzi, 2020), despite the potential effect of consumer brand perceptions on reshoring decisions (Eurofound, 2019). In a recent Deloitte study, one of the few exploring the consumer perspective, around 65% of consumersindividual and corporate -preferred locally manufactured products and organisations with operationally excellent supply chains and ecologically friendly approaches (Deloitte Insights, 2021).…”

Back-shoring vs near-shoring: a comparative exploratory study in the footwear industry

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Principles of reshoring development in luxury goods sector1

“…Using this scale, authors tested consumers' willingness to reward reshoring companies. Demand-side perspective emphasizes value creation for consumers, which differs from the firm-side point of view generally adopted by researches analyzing reshoring drivers and motivations [Grappi et al, 2018;Grappi et al 2020].…”