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This study aims to investigate the role of interpersonal influence on consumer purchase decisions regarding foreign products, specifically by exploring consumers’ social reaction styles (acquisitive and protective) when confronted with normative pressures and their subsequent impact on consumers’ purchase behavior in the context of situational animosity.

Three studies were conducted in China to empirically examine the proposed research model. The US–China Chip War of 2022 was used as the research context for situational animosity, while the Japan–China relationship representing a stable animosity condition was used for contrast.

This study establishes the mediating role of perceived normative pressure in linking animosity attitudes to purchase avoidance in situational animosity. It also validates that consumers’ social reaction styles (acquisitive and protective) help predict distinct behavioral outcomes, holding significant implications for advancing research in the field of product and brand consumption.

This research provides a novel perspective by exploring consumers’ social reaction styles when dealing with normative pressure in situational animosity. The distinction between acquisitive and protective reaction styles adds depth and originality to the study. Moreover, this study examines consumer behavior in two distinct consumption contexts: switching intentions to local products and purchase intentions for products from offending countries in hidden consumption situations. This dual perspective offers a comprehensive exploration of consumers’ purchase behavior under normative pressure, contributing to the novelty of this research.

The present research responds to researchers’ calls for more research of consumer animosity on potential boundary conditions (e.g. product categories) and marketing strategies that may mitigate such negative impacts on marketers’ product and/or brand performance, with a special focus on the soft service sector. This paper aims to address the unique characteristics of service internationalization, i.e. cultural embeddedness, hybridized country origins and high consumption visibility, by proposing a social identity signaling model to explain consumer animosity effects in the soft service sector.

Two surveys (Pretest with 240 participants and Study 1 with 351 participants) and one experiment (Study 2 with 731 participants) were conducted to empirically test our hypotheses in the Japanese-Chinese relationship context.

The stronger the national/cultural symbolism and social expressiveness, the stronger the consumer avoidance for the service category. Then the consumer culture positioning strategy that can mitigate an offending country’s cultural symbolism can reduce consumer avoidance.

This research introduces two factors that could affect the negative social identity signaling capacity of service categories in the animosity context: the national/cultural symbolism reflecting an offending country and the social expressiveness communicating social identity. In line with the social identity signaling perspective, the present research specifically uses consumer avoidance as the dependent variable to capture the notion that consumers avoid consuming services because they wish to avoid being associated with an offending country that may threaten their in-group social identities.

Because of its omission of social influences, conventional animosity research has failed to sufficiently consider consumption context. To address this limitation, this research constitutes two interrelated parts: (a) investigating how normative influences (value-expressive and utilitarian influences) shape consumers’ animosity attitudes and purchase intentions; and (b) building on the normative influence perspective and separating consumption context into purchase (online vs. offline) and usage (private vs. public) contexts. The goal was to examine under the condition of preference conflict, how consumption contexts with different degrees of behavioral exposure affect purchase decisions.

One pretest, one survey and one experiment were conducted to empirically validate the proposed research model.

In an international crisis, consumers’ attitudes and behaviors were socially determined. Moreover, the online purchase with private usage (offline purchase with public usage) condition resulted in the highest (lowest) level of purchase intention.

This research pioneers in the animosity literature to identify the possibility of preference conflict in a situational international crisis, and to more delicately separate the conventional consumption context into purchase and usage contexts.

This research examines consumer assessments of brand value derived from the redeployment of brand-related assets following a crossborder acquisition (CBA). The current study synthesizes research on international marketing standardization/adaptation to the context of crossborder horizontal acquisitions as the market entry strategy to investigate consumer evaluations of the postacquisition choice of brand name and brand positioning.

A pretest and two studies were conducted in Taiwan to empirically examine effects from the theory-driven model of product legitimacy (PL) on an entity's postacquisition brand value, as well as any moderating effects of consumer localism.

Postacquisition brands were evaluated more positively when positioned in a manner that was in accordance with perceived PL. Consumer localism as another contingency factor reflected consumers' favorable attitude toward marketing adaptation following CBAs.

This article is a pioneering work to draw on the consumer perspective to investigate asset redeployments between the acquirer and target following a crossborder horizontal acquisition. Specifically, this research introduces PL as a contingency factor to examine consumers' evaluation of brand value, which is derived from the redeployment of brand name and brand positioning in the context of a developed-country firm's acquisition of an advanced emerging-market firm for entry into the market.

This study aims to examine whether the selection of a new outsider chief marketing officer from a developed-country incumbent firm with an established brand can serve as an alternative strategy to the acquisition of developed-country firms in benefiting the internationalization of a postselection emerging-market brand marketer that suffers from late-mover disadvantages.

A pretest (survey) and two main studies (experiments) were conducted to examine the proposed mediation model of “Chief Marketing Officer background—enhancement of capabilities—brand competitiveness”.

An emerging-market brand marketer gains enhanced resources and capabilities when a new chief marketing officer is recruited from a developed-country incumbent with a superior reputation, leading to improved brand competitiveness. This positive effect accrues from the new chief marketing officer's background (i.e. prior work organization) spilling over to his/her new emerging-market employer.

This research integrates the research streams of emerging-market firm internationalization, chief marketing officer and executive succession to provide an alternative strategy for emerging-market firms to overcome late-mover disadvantages in global markets.

Research on acquisition performance has not considered the customer perspective for a long time. Based on associative network theory, we propose two spillover effects – forward and reverse – to reflect the effect of acquirer and target reputation on customer responses toward a horizontal acquisition. The reputation of both the acquirer and target can transfer to acquisition and affect customer attitudes toward the post-merged corporation and target customer retentions. However, the influence of the acquirer reputation (forward spillover effect) is stronger than that of the target reputation (reverse spillover effect). Because of asymmetric spillover effects from the acquirer and target, we suggest that the performance effects of A acquiring B may not be the same as that of B acquiring A, given that A and B are highly related firms. The level of post-acquisition brand integration moderates the asymmetric spillover effect on acquisition performance. A higher level of post-acquisition brand integration indicates a stronger asymmetric spillover effect on acquisition performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how a clustered foreign firm’s network ties of social capital and government relationship may affect its institutional legitimacy and performance for clustered firms in emerging economies. To accomplish this task, the authors identify network ties (e.g. bridging ties and strong ties) and show, for each, the direct effects on institutional legitimacy and organizational performance. The findings show that bridging ties, strong ties, and government relationship directly and significantly impact organizational performance.

This study used the two-step approach suggested by Anderson and Gerbing (1988). The first step uses confirmatory factor analysis to validate the psychometric properties of the measurement scales. The second step then uses structural equation modeling to examine the proposed hypotheses. The statistical software LISREL 8.80 was used for the data analysis.

This paper finds that industrial clusters serve an important legitimizing function for clustered firms. The corporate ties (both bridging and strong ties), institutional legitimacy, and governmental relationships all play a positive role in organizational performance in emerging economies. The government relationships are also found to have a positive effect on institutional legitimacy. The institutional legitimacy can develop from industrial clustering. The foreign enterprises within a cluster should pay attention to their vertical and horizontal relationships.

First, the questionnaires cannot be verified if these instructions were followed in each instance (because the responses were simply returned by mail). Second, this study grouped all foreign firms into one cluster. Other foreign firms may find that culture has different effects on their organizational performances in emerging economies. Third, the relationships and impacts of various factors were not investigated within the theoretical framework proposed in this study. Fourth, the study did not address the heterogeneity of domestic and foreign firms. Fifth, the study only focusses on the textile industry.

The institutional legitimacy can develop from industrial clustering. In order to make a good impression on the local government, clustered firms should adhere to government policy, hire more local workers and buy local raw materials. The foreign enterprises in emerging economies should recognize that, being inside of an industrial cluster, it is important to have strong ties with other cluster members and to interact frequently and honestly with the relevant government agencies and organizations. To enrich resource-utilizing and reduce their liability of foreignness, foreign firms within clusters should seek to increase their firms’ network ties and establish good relationships with local governments to obtain competitive advantage.

This study aims at filling that gap by using the concepts of strong ties, bridging ties of social capital, institutional legitimacy, and government relationship to understand how clustered firms influence institutionalization through corporate strategies. The analysis not only helps extend the literature on network ties configuration, but also expands the literature on institutionalization. The study explores how clustered firms actively built up their own advantageous positions and then combine these with their original passive interests to favorably enhance their competitiveness in rapidly changing and institutionally unstable emerging economies.

First, connects existing theories to provide an integrated theoretical framework for understanding the roles of social capital and institutional legitimacy. Second, provides evidence to the literature by examining how network ties and government relationship may jointly influence the performance for clustered foreign firms in emerging economies, an area largely ignored in prior research. Third, provides one theoretical lens through which different outcomes of social capital and institutional issues can be analyzed. Fourth, the authors put forward a relationship capability and an institutional capability model to study how firms can avoid risk and obtain benefits by clustering in emerging economies.

This paper summarises recent developments in Taiwan’s electronics industry, with a focus on the three major sectors of the industry:computers (information electronics), communications, and consumer electronics. Current major business practices and prospects of each industrial sector are discussed. The paper concludes with an assessment of the future development possibilities of Taiwan's electronics industry.