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The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of the country-of-origin (COO) effect on overseas distributors’ behaviour in international marketing channels. Integrating the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and the concepts of country-induced biases, the current study develops an empirically testable model that explains and predicts overseas distributors’ behaviour in international marketing channels.

Hypotheses were tested using primary data stemmed from a survey of channel relationships between exporters and their overseas distributors. Data were collected from 103 distributors in the USA.

Empirical evidence shows that attitude towards foreign brands, social valuation of the origin of brands, and perceived behavioural control affect overseas distributors’ intention to place foreign brands. In addition, country-induced bias factors – buyer animosity and country-related affect to the origin of manufacture – are considered to be the antecedents of attitude towards foreign brands.

Because this study adopted a cross-sectional design, the limitations of this method can be applied to the study. In addition, because of the research context, the results of the present research may lack generalizability. This manuscript, however, integrated the TPB and the concepts of country-induced biases and addressed the calls for research on the COO effects on overseas distributors’ decision in international marketing channels.

The manuscript suggests that to build positive attitudes towards foreign brands, a firm should focus on promotions through various media in international markets to lower animosity and the perceived risk to the origin of manufacture. In addition, firms with foreign brands need to identify and target a segment that feels comfortable about spending their resources on those brands. Finally, international marketers should focus on creating positive attitudes towards foreign brand goods and proper pricing strategies.

This manuscript fills the knowledge gap of the COO effect on organizational buyer behaviour in international marketing channels.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of identity-based consumer perceptions on the brand avoidance of foreign brands across multiple markets.

Focussing on general product category brands, the study was conducted across two countries, i.e. New Zealand (Study 1) and Pakistan (Study 2), using online surveys. Study 1 explores the perceptions of university students, whereas Study 2 evaluates the perceptions of a more heterogeneous population across the country. Partial least squares–structural equation modelling was used to analyse the model.

First, the results confirm that individual-level identity-based drivers (undesired self-congruence and negative social influence) consistently predict brand avoidance for foreign brands across both markets, whereas country-level drivers (consumer ethnocentrism and animosity) have inconsistent effects across the markets. Second, the study demonstrates that avoidance attitude fully mediates the relationship between antecedences and intentions to avoid foreign brands.

The finding that undesired self-congruence is the strongest predictor of brand avoidance across the markets reinforces the importance of brand image congruence with the target audience. Considering the negative effect of social influence, especially on social media (i.e. Facebook and Twitter), this finding cautions managers to constantly monitor the prevailing negative word of mouth (online or offline) about the brand to mitigate its potential effect.

Drawing on social identity theory, this study explores the identity-based pre-purchase determinants of brand avoidance at the country level and at the individual level. These determinants have never been explored yet in the context of brand avoidance.

Country of origin (COO) is well established as an extrinsic product cue that influences buyer behavior in the business-to-business (B2B) context. However, non-product-specific attitudes to a COO, including the notion of animosity, have received rather less attention. This paper aims to investigate COO as a multi-dimensional construct and animosity as a normative dimension of buyers’ attitudes and intentions.

The work is based on data collected from industrial buyers in Egypt and Canada to enable a comparative perspective between developing and developed countries. Structural equation modeling was used to test the study’s hypotheses.

Country of manufacture was an antecedent of perceived quality and a determinant of brand evaluation in both countries. Price was an antecedent of perceived risk and value in Egypt, while its impact on perceived risk was less pronounced in Canada. Perceived value was the strongest determinant of willingness to buy, while animosity played a significant role in this respect in Canada but not in Egypt.

Country of brand was not included as a dimension to be investigated; industry type was not controlled and may confound the results; and generalization of the results is limited given the cross-sectional approach.

The study’s contribution lies in four main elements, viewed individually and in combination: investigating a large number of COO constructs that have not been studied within a single research context in B2B before; including the animosity construct in a B2B setting; contrasting “benefit received” and “sacrifice given” constructs that help to shape industrial buyers’ purchase decisions; and carrying out the research in two very different countries to help improve the generalizability of results.

Extant research shows that consumers regularly misclassify country-of-origin (COO) associated with brands. The purpose of this paper is to examine changes in behavioral intentions (i.e. purchase intentions for self and others and brand judgments) when consumers are made aware that they have misclassified the COO and then are informed of the brand’s correct origin. Drawing on cognitive dissonance theory, the authors also explore the moderating roles of consumer affinity, animosity, and product knowledge.

Two experiments test the direct and moderating effects of COO misclassification awareness on behavioral intentions.

The findings show detrimental effects of misclassification on behavioral intentions when consumers have high affinity with misclassified COO. Moreover, the experiments demonstrate a significantly greater decrease in behavioral intentions among experts than novices in the low-affinity condition and the reverse effect in the high-affinity condition.

The negative effects of COO misclassification on consumer behavioral intentions highlight the need for managers to proactively avoid misclassification. The findings should also aid managers in developing responsive marketing campaigns that consider consumer affinity, animosity, and level of product knowledge.

This research is the first to compare consumer behavioral responses before and after COO misclassification awareness. The study demonstrates that cognitive dissonance underpins the process of misclassification. It also contributes to COO literature by examining the interaction of consumer affinity and animosity with product knowledge and their influence on consumer behavior in the case of COO misclassification.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships among organizational factors (export market experience, international commitment), external environment (competitive intensity), export marketing strategy and export success. The findings yielded by the analyses confirm that export market-specific experience and international commitment are significant drivers of export success. In addition, the results indicate that the degree of product adaptation is positively related to profitability and overall success, while price and distribution adaptation to local conditions have a direct impact on sales growth. Finally, the authors found evidence that international commitment exerts a positive effect on the adaptation of marketing strategies to country-specific requirements. Thus, the study findings can be used to formulate business and marketing strategies to improve firm’s success in overseas markets.

This study used PLS for dealing with formative and reflective measures and used a sample of 200 export ventures that exported on the average in more than 15 countries.

This study clearly shows that export venture success is linked to managerial commitment and experiential knowledge and that firms contribute to export venture success by adapting product to foreign markets. It is also shown that firms in more competitive environments increase their effort to adapt, leading to better export venture performance.

Although Austrian companies are typically characterized as small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the study is limited to this sample.

Managers in SME should concentrate their effort on a small set of export venture countries of concentrate their capabilities and effort (commitment and personal) to increase adaptation in those selected market, which will lead to increasing export venture performance.

The study differentiates between formative and reflective measures which most studies in this genre do not, which is a fundamental conceptual shortcoming. This study shows with robust result the interrelation between commitment and managerial experience (intra-firm factors) and the degree of competition in foreign markets and how marketing mix adaptation affects export venture performance measured over a period of five years.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of urbanicity on rural–urban migrants' dietary diversity and nutrition intake and whether its effect differs across various urban environments of migrants.

Using the individual- and time-invariant fixed effects (two-way FE) model and five-year panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), this paper estimates a linear and nonlinear relationship between urbanicity and nutrition. The paper also explores the spatial heterogeneity between rural–urban migrants and rural–suburban migrants. Dietary diversity, total energy intake and the shares of energy obtained from protein and fat, respectively, are used to measure rural–urban migrants' nutrition on both quality and quantity aspects.

The study shows that rural–urban migrants have experienced access to more diverse, convenient and prepared foods, and the food variety consumed is positively associated with community urbanicity. Energy intake is positively and significantly affected by community urbanicity, and it also varies with per capita household income. The obvious inverse U-shaped relationship reveals that improving community urbanicity promotes an increase in the shares of energy obtained from protein and fat at a decreasing rate, until reaching the urbanicity index threshold of 66.69 and 54.26, respectively.

This paper focuses on the nutritional status of rural–urban migrants, an important pillar for China's development, which is often neglected in the research. It examines the urbanicity and the nutrition of migrants in China, which provides a new perspective to understand the dietary and nutritional intake among migrants in the economic and social development. Moreover, the urbanicity index performs better at measuring urban feathers rather than the traditional rural/urban dichotomous classification.

Caste is the basic structural feature of Hindu society; all social scientists are agreed on this. Since Hinduism is generally recognised to be as much a social system as a religion, its social framework embodying caste rituals has governed the lives of the majority of Indians for hundreds of years. Having deep roots in tradition and enjoying sanction in all religious literature belonging to the pre‐British era, caste has been the dominant principle of social organisation since ancient times. In fact, barring the recent past, Hinduism has always been identified in the minds of most Indians with caste observances. Writes R.C. Zaehner: “…until a century or so ago the acceptance of the caste system was considered by the orthodox to be the sole effective criterion of whether one was or was not a Hindu. In matters of belief it mattered not at all whether one believed in one god or many, or not at all, nor did it much matter on how one interpreted ‘liberation’ or whether one rejected it outright so long as one fulfilled the duties prescribed for one's caste.”

The advantages of offshoring are increasingly under scrutiny, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has advanced the debate, calling for a redefinition of firms' production location strategies. While attention has primarily focused on the relocation of second-degree strategies, such as back-shoring, near-shoring and further offshoring, there are also other alternatives, including home country-based domestic product and process innovations, and the development of new business activities. The objective of the authors' paper is to identify which factors influence decision-makers when they select and implement such post-offshoring strategic alternatives.

The authors consider 11 Italian manufacturing companies that implemented these strategies and analyze triggers, drivers, enabling factors and barriers of the decision phase, as well as content, governance mode and timing of the implementation phase.

Based on the collected findings, the authors suggest a set of propositions for further research. First of all, firms can simultaneously manage multiple strategies by adopting an ambidextrous approach through which to mitigate supply chain risks. They may integrate their domestic and international production activities, but the home country remains central for innovations and production of high-end products and Industry 4.0 technologies increases the probability of investing in their home country. At the same time, lack of competence induces selective near- and back-shoring, while full back-shoring is mainly a consequence of managerial mistakes. Competence availability acts as a barrier to relocation in the home country, inducing the implementation of either an insourcing strategy or a combination of insourcing and outsourcing.

The authors' work identifies post-offshoring as a dynamic process and provides insights into the post-pandemic scenario. The conceptual framework may represent a useful tool for company managers in re-evaluating their initial offshoring strategies.

What caused the mid-2000s world commodity price “bubble” and the recent commodity price growth? Some have suggested that rapid global industrial growth over the past decade is the key driver of price growth. Others have argued that high commodity prices are a result of excessively loose monetary policy. The purpose of this paper is to extend the current research in this area by incorporating emerging economies, the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) nations specifically, into global measures.

The paper uses a vector error correction (VEC) model and computes variance decomposition and impulse response functions (IRFs).

The empirical analysis suggest that the “demand channel” plays a large part in explaining commodity price growth whether BRIC countries are included or excluded from the analysis. However, excess liquidity may also play a part in explaining price growth. In addition, factoring in BRIC country data leads to the conclusion that unexpected movements in liquidity eventually explain more of the variation in commodity prices than unexpected demand shocks. This specific result is not caught in the sample that only incorporates advanced economies.

Despite the theory of Frankel (1986) and the findings of previous global vector autoregression (VAR)/VEC analyses, interest rates, especially shocks, have a minimal impact on consumer and commodity prices. Perhaps future studies should include an interest rate in their analysis that more closely reflects interest rates associated with information used by commodity consumers, producers, and investors. Some analyses such as Hua (1998) use the LIBOR rate, which is highly associated with developed financial markets in the advanced economies. Data quality and availability in the BRIC countries severely limited the length of the time period analyzed and the frequency of the data. Finding longer sample periods or higher frequency data can help to minimize bias in future research. In this paper, monetary aggregates and short-term interest rates were loosely connected to monetary policy. It would also be interesting to directly examine how special programs like quantitative easing influenced global liquidity.

The results of the IRFs and variance decompositions confirm some of the previous findings reported in Belke et al. (2010), Hua (1998), and Swaray (2008) that suggest that positive shocks to liquidity positively impact commodity prices. In particular, both samples suggest that this is a short-run impact that occurs after two quarters. However, in the sample that includes information about liquidity from BRIC countries, excess liquidity positively affects commodity prices after six and seven quarters as well. The insignificant results of Granger causality tests of the effect of monetary variables on commodity prices suggests that this relationship is limited to movements in liquidity that is unexpected by agents in the system. These “shocks” could be attributed to a number of factors including exogenous monetary policy changes such as the unprecedented responses by the Federal Reserve during and after the 2008 global financial crisis.

First, empirical research that claims to analyze relationships at a “global” level needs to account for the growing influence of emerging economies and not simply the advanced economies. Otherwise, results may be biased as they were when too much of the forecast error variance in commodity prices was attributed to shocks to output when it should have been attributed to shocks to excess liquidity. Second, those who criticize expansionary monetary policy in the advanced countries, especially by the Federal Reserve, for pushing up commodity prices should also direct their attention toward monetary authorities elsewhere, especially the BRIC countries, since information on excess liquidity from these countries adds to the influence that global excess liquidity has on commodity prices. Third, monetary policymakers in the advanced countries need to closely monitor liquidity in the BRIC countries, since the discrepancies between the ALL and ADV samples suggests that BRIC excess liquidity affects commodity prices in a way that cannot be captured by examining advanced country data alone.

No other paper in this area looked at the BRIC countries.