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This study aims to develop and examine a model that links the foreigner service orientation, defined as indigenous consumers’ preference for service environments popular among foreign versus local consumers, to both foreigner and local comfort in intercultural service encounters.

The authors collected cross-sectional survey data from 516 indigenous consumers in Qatar.

According to the findings, although foreigner comfort is positively related to their service orientation, local comfort is negatively related to foreigner service orientation. The results further indicate that the relationships are intensified when cosmopolitanism or collective narcissism is high and when consumers are alone in the service setting.

Service firms can use the findings of this research to create a meaningful service environment based on consumers’ orientation to the in-group and out-group.

The examination of the foreigner service orientation addresses the possibility that consumers might prefer foreign consumers to local ones in service environments. This research also addresses the dearth of research on customer-to-customer intercultural service encounter.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the moral failure of a scandalized foreign brand afflicted with a product-harm crisis on competing brands (i.e. within the same product category) while taking into account the country of origin (COO) of the brands.

This paper presents the results of two studies. The first study uses an experimental design, while the second uses a survey to examine a real-life product-harm crisis.

The results indicate that the moral failure of a scandalized foreign brand has an indirect negative effect on the intention to purchase competing foreign brands from the COO of the scandalized foreign brand. This effect is, however, reversed for domestic brands, where moral failure has an indirect positive effect on the intention to purchase competing domestic brands.

The results of this research were based on an examination of how US consumers responded to the moral failure of Japanese and German brands. Future studies should examine brands from different COOs in different countries.

These results suggest that competing foreign brands from the COO of the scandalized brand should collaborate to quickly handle a product-harm crisis to prevent a spillover and that domestic competitors should capitalize on the opportunity to attract new customers.

This study represents a first attempt to examine the effect of a foreign brand’s moral failure in handling product-harm crisis on competing brands, both foreign and domestic.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and replicate the indirect effect of smartphone brand tribalism on purchase intent via brand pride and brand attitude.

Using survey data from 190 US (Study 1) and 432 Qatari (Study 2) smartphone consumers, path analysis is used to evaluate the hypotheses.

For these disparate samples, only the defense of the tribal brand dimension of brand tribalism influences brand pride, which in turn leads to a sequential process of brand attitude and purchase intention.

Using only smartphone data from the USA and Qatar may hinder external validity. As effect sizes in this context are understood, researchers have additional benchmarks for future brand tribalism and brand pride research.

The psychological underpinning and presence of brand tribes in society cannot be overlooked by strategists. Such tribal-laden following is too evident within smartphone communities. By further understanding the effect of brand tribalism on brand pride and subsequent attitudinal response and behavioral intent, marketers and brand leaders are in an improved position to develop strategies that appeal to targeted customers, ultimately growing and strengthening their brand value.

Supported by the anthropological view of brand tribalism, this paper contributes to the branding literature by examining the indirect effect of brand tribalism on purchase intention via brand pride and brand attitude. The posited model, previously untested and replicated here across two ethnically diverse samples, shows more explanatory power for defense of the tribal brand on brand pride as compared to the other brand tribalism dimensions. A novel and valid, multi-item brand pride measure is also developed.

Previous literature has reported inconsistent findings regarding the impact of uncertainty avoidance (UA) on intercultural experiences. This includes positive, negative and insignificant associations between UA on the one hand and cosmopolitanism or comfort with intercultural service encounters (ICSE) on the other hand. The purpose of this paper is to participate in addressing these contradictions. More specifically, this study examines how UA affects expatriate cosmopolitanism as well as approach of service environments patronized by local customers by introducing two moderators: national identification and perceived discrimination.

The authors propose a conceptual model based on the results of a literature review. The authors test it with survey data collected from Indian expatriates (n=341) living in Qatar, using structural equation modeling.

The results corroborate the moderating role of national identification. Under low identification, expatriate consumers engage in a prospective form of uncertainty management, leading them to adopt a more cosmopolitan stance. Under high identification, their uncertainty plays an inhibitory role, reducing their cosmopolitanism and negatively affecting their approach of service places patronized by local consumers. Perceived discrimination did not moderate the impact of UA as expected on either cosmopolitanism or approach.

This paper extends the prior research on UA by testing how two moderators could activate either a prospective or an inhibitory form of uncertainty. It also contributes to research on ICSE, by focusing on customer-to-customer interactions in a multicultural marketplace.

This study aims to investigate how employee and other-consumer safety compliance amid the COVID-19 outbreak influences a focal consumer’s intention to approach a service establishment. The study also examines the three-way interaction effect of employee compliance, other-consumer compliance and perceived threat associated with COVID-19 on approach intentions.

This study uses an experimental approach with a 2 (employee safety compliance: low vs high) × 2 (other-consumer safety compliance: low vs high) × 2 (consumer perceived threat from COVID-19: low vs high) between-subjects design. Students were trained to recruit a convenience sample of 827 consumers in Qatar and data were analyzed using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression.

Employee safety compliance has a positive impact on the consumer’s approach intentions. Employee safety compliance has a bigger impact on approach intentions if other consumers in the service environment are also compliant with safety measures and even a greater effect when the perceived threat from COVID-19 is high. The effect of the interaction between employee and other-consumer safety compliance is significantly different under two levels of perceived threat.

To enhance approach intentions, managers should start by establishing and maintaining safety compliance among employees and then achieving compliance among consumers. Achieving compliance among employees and consumers has a positive impact on approach intentions despite the focal consumer’s perceived risk associated with COVID-19.

This is the first study to investigate how the safety compliance of employees and other consumers jointly affects consumers’ approach intentions during a global pandemic, and it is among very few attempts to manipulate dimensions of the social servicescape.

This paper aims to introduce the concept of admiration for members of other countries as an emotion related to people's perceptions of, and preference for, products that originate from the admired country. It also aims to examine the longitudinal effects of animosity.

Data were collected by asking members of an internet consumer panel in the USA to complete an online questionnaire. A total of 300 questionnaires were received and 20 were eliminated for extremeness. Panel members were aged 18 and above and the average age of the sample was 44; 60 percent of the participants are female.

The effects of animosity on the preference for foreign products attenuate over time. Admiration is positively related to a preference for a product from an admired country over a product from another country. Admiration was found to be positively related to Japanese product judgments.

The paper extends the work of Klein, and suggests that animosity can be displaced by a positive emotion, namely admiration. Managers therefore need to assess the emotions directed towards their countries to capitalize on such information when marketing their products.

This research seeks to add to the body of research pertaining to animosity by examining the additional roles of anticipated emotions and subjective norms on consumers' purchase intentions regarding foreign products when companies' or governments' actions cause negative repercussions. The paper also examines the role of group responsibility as an antecedent to animosity.

Data were collected using a snowball sampling technique among undergraduate students from a prominent university in Kuwait. Of the 460 questionnaires received, 13 were eliminated for incompleteness. Sample members were aged 18 and above, and 53.9 percent of the respondents were females.

Subjective norms related to buying Danish products – as well as the negative emotions expected from buying the product and the positive emotions expected from not buying the product – led to less willingness to buy Danish products. In addition, social pressure was found to be the more important factor in consumers' willingness to buy compared to anticipated emotions.

This paper suggests that, in addition to animosity, other factors influence a consumer's decision to withhold consumption. Therefore, managers need to assess the emotions and norms characterized by citizens of the target country to capitalize on such information when marketing their products.

The purpose of this paper is to utilize the BIAS map from the social psychology literature to operationalize and simultaneously examine the effects of the affective and cognitive components of country image.

The researchers collected survey data using a snowball sample of undergraduates from a prominent university in Kuwait. The final sample consisted of 410 Kuwaitis who were 18 years or older; 52 percent of the respondents were female.

The results of this study confirmed that affective country attitudes (i.e. contempt and admiration) relate to Kuwaitis’ willingness to buy American products. The results also support the conclusion that warmth and competence are positively related to admiration but negatively related to contempt.

Future research should identify situations in which the affective dimensions of country image play the more dominant role in consumer decision making. The model should also be tested across other cultural samples to increase the generalizability of these results.

Managers must correctly prioritize the affective and cognitive components of country image, in order to either emphasize or downplay the country of origin, or when deciding to use foreign branding strategies.

This study provides a theoretical foundation for differentiating between the cognitive and affective components of country image and differentiates between the various dimensions of each of these components. The study further enables managers to determine whether country affect or cognition is the main driver of country‐of‐origin perceptions.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of collective angst, the concern about the future viability of one’s group, during service failure and recovery.

To test this objective the authors utilize an experiment to examine how Kuwaitis react to service failures when the front-line employee is a foreigner.

The results indicate that collective angst is associated with greater anger following a service failure. The authors also find that collective angst moderates the impact of cultural distance on anger and recommendation intentions following a service-failure recovery attempt. More specifically, cultural distance leads to greater anger and lower intentions to recommend a service establishment for consumers that experience greater collective angst.

The research provides the first attempt at examining how local consumers react to foreigner service providers, by examining how concern about the future vitality of one’s national group, in other words collective angst, affects such reactions.