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This study investigated a new attributional phenomenon in a brand scandal setting in which consumers tend to blame the top management of a brand, even though it was the frontline parties that caused the scandal. The authors termed this phenomenon upward blame attribution (UBA), shedding light on whether consumers in a host country indicate a higher UBA for a multinational (vs domestic) brand scandal, which in turn reinforces their revenge and impairs their reconciliation reactions, and whether these effects are contingent on consumer animosity.

Two experimental studies were conducted with real and fictitious brand/product and country stimuli with 1,399 Chinese participants.

Both studies verified UBA and found that Chinese consumers' UBA is higher for multinational (vs domestic) brand scandals, which drives their stronger desire for revenge and weaker desire for reconciliation. Moreover, consumers with high (vs low) animosity toward a multinational brand's home country reported a higher UBA for the multinational (vs domestic) brand scandal, which in turn reinforces their desire for revenge and impairs their desire for reconciliation.

The study provides new insights into host-country consumers' more severe UBA and responses toward multinational versus domestic brand scandals and the amplifying role of consumer animosity in these processes. It also has implications for mitigating host-country consumers' UBA and negative responses to multinational brand scandals.

This study contributes to the blame attribution literature by verifying consumers' UBA and the country-of-origin (COO) literature by revealing host-country consumers' higher UBA, stronger revenge desire and weaker reconcile desire toward multinational (vs domestic) brand scandals. It extends the knowledge regarding consumers' blame attributions toward the top management of a multinational (vs domestic) brand in scandals and the impact of such attributions.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the millennial consumers’ purchasing behavior of fashion clothing brands in the spectrum of brand awareness, brand schematicity with brand consciousness and brand nationality. This study mainly considered the millennial consumers as they are the most dynamic and discerning segment when choosing a distinct fashion brand.

The study uses a well-structured questionnaire developed and distributed to 266 millennial respondents using shoping malls and university campus intercept methods. Data were analyzed by applying the structural equation modeling.

The results show that brand awareness has a mediating effect on the millennials’ purchasing behavior toward fashion clothing brands. The study also confirms the active moderation role of brand schematicity on the purchasing behavior toward fashion clothing brands.

Based on these findings, the fashion clothing retailers should aim to maximize their sales from the millennial segments by enhancing brand awareness. The schematic consumers are more engaged in the numbers of quality hints to make their choice on the fashion clothing brands. Therefore, the practitioners must consider such information, and that should be available in the fashion clothing retail outlets.

The study contributes to the existing literature of the millennials’ purchasing behavior toward the fashion clothing brands. Moreover, research on this segment related to brand awareness and brand schematicity is insufficient, and the current study may add significant value.

This study aims to investigate the impact of cross-border charitable activities on host- and home-country consumers based on the social identity theory.

Through an extensive literature review and two experimental designs, this study establishes the research framework and hypothesises the relationships between the constructs.

National power moderates the impact of cross-border charitable activities on host- and home-country consumers. In particular, compared to countries with high national power, countries with low national power undertaking cross-border charitable activities will receive more positive reactions from the host-country consumers, and, conversely, more negative reactions from the home-country consumers.

From the consumer perspective, this study finds that brand cross-border charitable activities have different influences on consumers in different countries because of an identity transformation mechanism that exists between the “insiders” and the “outsiders”, which is different from the assumptions of western theories.

The findings provide insights for undertaking brand cross-border charitable activities.

Previous studies, which are based on social identity categorisation, assume that cross-border charitable activities have a more positive impact on home-country consumers than host-country consumers. However, this study adopts the research paradigm of social identity relationisation and draws an opposite conclusion, which not only expands the theory of local intergroup interaction, but also clarifies how brand cross-border charitable activities influence Chinese consumers.

Reviews recent work in the country of origin and brand name literatures regarding the formation of perceptions regarding perceived brand origin. Based on this review, presents six hypotheses concerning such perceptions, including their effect on consumers’ ratings of quality. Using real brands in two experiments, finds support for several of our hypotheses relating to the effects of country of component source, country of manufacture, and country of corporate ownership. In particular, finds that country of manufacture had no effect on product quality evaluations when country of corporate ownership was also present.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand an increasingly widespread practice consisting, of a brand, in signaling the domestic origin of its products aimed at domestic consumers, that is, the “made in the domestic country” (MIDC) strategy. To this end, it is proposed to analyze the MIDC label as a cue interacting with the brand’s characteristics (brand equity and country of origin of the brand).

A between-subjects experiment is conducted among 293 French consumers on four different brands of pasta. The overall design is a 2 (with/without the MIDC label) × 2 (high/low brand equity) × 2 (domestic/foreign brand) mixed design.

The results show that intention to buy the product increases significantly with the presence of the MIDC label, but not so willing to pay. The positive effect on buying intention is greater when: the product has rather low brand equity, consumer ethnocentrism is high and/or consumers are strongly attached to their national identity.

The present research extends the literature on country-of-origin effects by taking into account the role of the brand equity of the product. However, the study focused on only one low-involvement product category (pasta) and one country (France).

This study shows that adding an MIDC label to the product is empirically justified.

While moderate or high scores on “patriotic” variables reinforce the positive impact of the MIDC label, low scores reverse the trend, that is, cause rejection.

The primary purpose of this study is to identify if and how international terrorism has altered the rank and value of brands, and whether the increasing uncertainty of globalizing risks need an adaptation of international brand management.

The methodology for this study was exploratory and quantitative at the same time, and utilized longitudinal brand ranking and a cross‐sector and cross‐industry data in a comparative research design. Both descriptive and relational statistics are used to analyze the data.

The key findings reveal that, in the five consecutive years after 9/11/2001, brands have experienced significant moderation in rank and value. A significant gap in the evolution of US and non‐US brands was found in this period of time. The evidence calls for brand management that reflects the risks that globalized at the same pace as brand reach.

The limitations to the study are that the findings cannot explore all possible causes of uncertainty, but it nevertheless provides strong indications.

Managers should not assume that terrorism and other globalizing risks only cause direct physical destruction; they need to be adequately prepared to handle indirect impact that can alter the rank and value of their brands. The paper identifies specific areas for future megabrand strategy and calls for its internationalization.

Consumers' evaluations of brand extensions have gained considerable attention in the marketing literature. The purpose of this study is to investigate how a brand's perceived global or local origin impacts evaluations of brand extensions and creates transfer effects of brand meaning. The paper conceptually characterizes the transference process and empirically tests the nature and extent of spillover effects of origin associations across multiple parent brands and extensions.

For the empirical testing of the conceptual model of transfer effects of origin associations we undertook a cross‐sectional consumer survey amongst a sample of 267 Norwegian respondents. Structural equation modelling was used to investigate the causal relationships between the latent exogenous and endogenous variables in the conceptual model.

The present study indicates that the global and local origin framework, first introduced by Steenkamp et al. in 2003, can explain the occurrence of reciprocal transfer of brand meaning across parent brands and extensions. The paper shows that global and local origin associations operate in a manner very similar to brand associations in the transference of perceptions. It finds that distinct origin associations influence the pre‐brand image and drive the forward effect on the attitude towards the extension as well as the subsequent backward effect upon the post‐brand image of the parent brand.

This paper reveals for the first time that distinct origin associations can initiate spillover effects across parent brands and extensions. This study is therefore an important step towards the generalizability of main brand extension studies to other contexts such as extensions of global brands.

Country‐of‐origin research has concentrated on the examination of consumer product perceptions or attitudes towards products made in different countries based on a variety of intrinsic or extrinsic cues. This research takes a different approach by examining the impact of country of origin, levels of foreign product ownership and consumer′s occupational status on interpersonal perceptions. Since respondents were not asked to engage in direct evaluations of various products of domestic or foreign origins, consumer normative response tendencies should be minimized. This approach also allows the examination of differential effects of country of origin on different consumer segments according to the occupational status.

When the UK went into the EEC, there was quite a lot of speculation that before long we would be seeing the development of truly multi‐national retailing; Fine Fare and Tesco would stalk across Europe, Hema and Hertie would invade Manchester and Cardiff. It hasn't happened like that. To be sure, Marks & Spencer and Mother‐care have made some successful forays, and from the other side of the Channel, GB‐Inno‐BM has made its appearance over here — in partnership, of course, with Sainsbury. Why hasn't it happened? At a recent conference in London on Pan‐European Consumer Advertising and Marketing, organised by Macfariane Conferences, Roderick White offered some answers. In this slightly edited version of the paper he presented at the conference, Roderick White concludes that genuinely multi‐national retailing seems likely to advance only slowly in Europe. He also takes the view that international retail expansion seems unlikely to develop through the large‐scale spread of retail brands on an internationally integrated basis. And the detail of merchandise policy will remain determinedly national.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how cause-related marketing (CRM) messages with a global focus and a national focus influence perceived brand authenticity and participation intentions among consumers across two countries, USA and South Korea, based on the social identity perspective. In addition, the study examines how perceived altruism of the brand mediates these relationships.

Hypotheses were tested by 2×2 between-subject quasi-experiment among about 260 US and Korean consumers. Data were analyzed using multivariate analyses of covariance (MANCOVA) and a moderated mediation analysis.

Results indicated that, overall, US consumers perceive higher brand authenticity and participation intentions toward CRM in than Korean consumers. Korean consumers perceived higher brand authenticity and participation intentions from a CRM message with a national focus, while US consumers did not have a significant preference between message focuses. According to the result of moderated mediation analysis, consumers’ perceived altruism toward the brand mediated the effects of interaction between message focus and consumer nationality.

This study provides a unique perspective about what specific kind of CRM message could be more effective for consumers in different cultures, and proposes a theoretical explanation of why such difference is observed based on consumers’ social identities and in-group favoritism.