The interplay between country stereotypes and perceived brand globalness/localness as drivers of brand preference

Abstract

This paper integrates country-of-origin and global/local branding literatures to investigate how country-and brand-specific factors influence consumer preferences. Drawing from the stereotype content model (SCM) in social psychology, it operationalizes country perceptions by means of warmth and competence judgments and juxtaposes them with consumers' perceptions of brand globalness and localness to predict brand attitudes and subsequent purchase intentions. An empirical study involving a series of well-known brands from different countries and product categories shows that (a) the SCM can effectively capture country-of-origin effects, (b) judgments of competence impact consumer preferences above and beyond the positive effects of brand globalness and localness, and (c) country stereotypes (particularly the dimension of warmth) interact with perceptions of brand globalness in determining brand attitude, whereas perceived brand localness has an independent effect. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed and directions for future research identified.

An examination of the interplay between country-of-origin, brand equity, brand preference and purchase intention toward global fashion brands

“…Therefore, brand has become so important that it is almost impossible today to find any product without a brand. Due to activity at the international level, it is essential to take into consideration the concepts of COO image, brand preference, purchase intention and their mechanisms in analysing consumer behavior in the area of marketing, as they help manufacturers to formulate their production and marketing policies both domestically and internationally through considering this relative advantage (Halkias et al, 2016;Yu et al, 2013;Winit et al, 2014). On this basis, it is very important for companies and marketers to identify the elements that can bring about changes in consumer behaviour and which would result in changes in brand equity (Godey et al, 2016).…”

Effects of country-of-origin stereotypes on consumer responses to product-harm crises

“…Only a limited number of studies, using hypothetical brands/categories (Maher and Carter, 2011), multiple real brands across multiple product categories (Halkias et al, 2016), and perceptions of companies as focal elements (Chen et al, 2014;Chattalas, 2015), delved into the cognitive dimensions of COO, specifically, perceived COO competence and warmth. These studies analyzed how the stereotypes of competence and warmth that are associated with a foreign company's origin affect company and/or product evaluations, and they further developed conceptual frameworks to envisage possible boundary conditions for such effects (Chattalas et al, 2008).…”

“…2. Theoretical framework 2.1 COO stereotypes of competence and warmth COO stereotypes are an oversimplified set of beliefs about the characteristics of nations and their members (Halkias et al, 2016). They are formed through direct or indirect experience with the country and are stored as cognitive elements in a consumer's memory (Maheswaran, 1994).…”

Local, global and glocal consumer brand relationships

“…The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986) provides support for the relationship between attitudes and purchase intention. Thus, the theory specifies that purchase intentions are a function of brand attitudes (McKenzie and Spreng, 1992), as has been corroborated in different studies with global, local and even glocal brands (Halkias et al, 2016;Laroche et al, 1996;Riefler, 2012; Zarzuela and Anton, SJME 23,3 2015), but without conducting a separate analysis comparing these different type of brands, as planned in this paper. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:…”

“…product categories highly familiar to Mexican consumers such as breakfast cereal, yoghurt, chocolate candy, beer, sportswear and footwear; the product categories covered a wide range of consumer goods to avoid category specificity and thus enhance the generalizability of the findings (Halkias et al, 2016); and product categories that contained both leading global and local brands from an objective perspective, that is, this paper considered local brands those that exist in one country, in a limited geographical area or are developed for and tailor-made to the unique needs and desires of local markets (Özsomer, 2012;Schuiling and Kapferer, 2004), whereas this paper treated as global brands those that are present in all regions of the world, with a significant percentage of their sales coming from outside the home region and total revenues of at least $1bn (ACNielsen).…”