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The purpose of this paper is to examine the attitudes and behaviour of Ukrainian consumers in terms of the purchase of beer (both foreign and domestic brands). There is an emphasis on the relative importance of the country of origin (COO), when compared to other factors.

Primary research is based on a convenience sample of 774 beer drinkers in the city of Simferopol, Ukraine, surveyed through face‐to‐face questionnaires.

Findings suggest that the COO are important to consumers, as is image, and the role of advertising in the creation of this image and in informing as to product availability. However, the COO would appear to be of lesser importance than quality, taste, brand and availability. Respondents commented on the image of foreign beers and the excellent advertising campaigns created by international companies. The Ukrainian consumer is brand conscious and also displays intense patriotism‐reflected in the popularity of local beers. However, consumption patterns are changing, and the demand for foreign beers are growing rapidly.

This would suggest that any foreign company developing a market presence in the Ukraine, should seek to buy outright (or at least acquire part ownership) of a Ukrainian beer producer. This will provide an entrance into the market, and a production/distribution channel for international brands produced under licence. Ownership will also facilitate the importation and distribution of foreign‐produced branded beers.

There has been relatively little published research on the newly independent Ukraine, yet it has a sizeable population, and as such, represents attractive business opportunities. This attraction will increase with the country's likely accession to the EU in the near future.

Previous research is mixed regarding consumer reactions and concerns regarding product brands with foreign‐sounding names. This paper aims to study the perception and purchase intent of foreign‐name brands in a sample of adult US and Chinese consumers.

US and Chinese consumers completed a 23‐item bilingual questionnaire to assess perceptions of foreign names on brand attitude and purchase intent for low‐involvement products, using two fictitious soft drink products.

The paper finds that there were no differences between US and Chinese consumers in attitudes towards foreign products or foreign brand names, except in the case of perceived deception. There were differences in perceptions that the product name was not authentic to the country of origin. Differences in purchase intent were driven by product type and price rather than country of origin or brand name.

When there is incongruence between product type and perceived country of origin, favorability for the product diminishes. Price, taste and packaging design may be more important in determining purchase intent.

While previous research looked at foreign brand names for high‐involvement products, this study addresses a low‐involvement product with mass‐market potential. China's and the USA's role as major consumers for global brands makes this study all the more relevant.

The purpose of this study investigates the asymmetric effects of brand origin confusion (BOC) on consumer preference and the purchase of local versus foreign brands in China. Drawing on the general country‐of‐origin (COO) literature and recent developments in brand‐origin studies and the emerging market phenomenon globally, it proposes and test a model of the asymmetric effects of BOC on consumer preference and the purchase of local versus foreign brands in China. This study intends to help to explain from a new angle the decreasing competitiveness of foreign brands in emerging markets, such as China.

The study pretest on nationally distributed brands across seven product categories resulted in a final set of 67 brands: 35 foreign and 32 local. Four hundred respondents evaluated measures related to brand origin, brand awareness, brand value, brand preference, and brand purchases in the previous six months. Hierarchical regression analysis was used in data analysis.

The hypotheses on the asymmetric effects of BOC between local and foreign brands in China were mostly supported. Specifically, the results showed that local brands are likely to be in an advantageous position when there is a high level of BOC. However, as the brand knowledge of consumers increases, the effects of BOC decrease.

This study provides evidence of the asymmetric effects of BOC between local and foreign brands and the moderating role of brand knowledge for local brands in China. It fills a gap in the international branding and marketing communication literature, and offers meaningful managerial insights for both local and international companies to formulate effective branding and marketing communication strategies in China and possibly in other emerging markets.

This study investigates the role of consumer cosmopolitanism on consumer attitudes and purchase intentions (PIs) towards foreign and local brands.

The responses were collected on a structured questionnaire through a consumer survey. The data were then analysed through structural equation modelling (SEM).

The results depict the positive influence of consumer cosmopolitanism on consumer attitudes towards foreign brands, which positively influences PIs towards foreign brands and negatively influences the PIs of local brands. Further, the mediating role of perceived quality was observed in explaining the consumer preference towards foreign and domestic brands.

Finally, the study concludes by providing implications for marketing scholars and managers of global and local brands.

The paper examines the underlying mechanisms related to consumer cosmopolitanism and its role in influencing the foreign and local brand purchase.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of country affinity, ethnocentrism and product quality judgment on self-brand connection regarding both domestic and foreign brands.

The study involved an online experiment and was conducted using online questionnaires. Sampling was done among undergraduate students of a Southwestern university in the US. The data was analyzed using SEM with PLS.

The results showed, for foreign brands, consumer self-brand connection increased through the effect of country affinity and product quality judgment. For domestic brands, self-brand connection was influenced by ethnocentrism (and not country affinity or product quality judgment).

This study only focused on one industry (i.e. Television industry), and the authors recommend future studies examine a broader range of industries. Moreover, other country related constructs such as national identity need to be examined in future studies.

Marketers focusing on global branding and international marketing can benefit from the findings of this paper by understanding the routes through which consumers build self-brand connections in foreign vs domestic settings. Additionally, marketers can, more effectively, invest their resources by focusing on the factors that can be influential (i.e. ethnocentrism for domestic brands vs country affinity and product judgment for foreign brands).

This study examines the effect of country affinity, ethnocentrism and product quality judgment for consumers' domestic country as well as a foreign country. Moreover, this study contributes toward the global branding literature by incorporating self-brand connection as a behavioral outcome.

To investigate consumer attitudes in India towards local and foreign brand names, against a background of increasing prevalence of foreign brand names and stereotypes of countries of origin covering the range from positive to negative.

A structured questionnaire administered face‐to‐face to 112 consumers in the city of Lucknow. Attitudes to brands categorized as “foreign” or “Indian” were measured by seven‐point semantic differential scales, and consumer ethnocentrism by CETSCALE. Factor analysis with varimax rotation was used to identify factors contributing to the observed degree of ethnocentrism in brand choices.

It was found that the quality of foreign brands was perceived to be generally higher and superior to local brands. Most consumers also associated greater accessibility of foreign brands in the Indian market with better quality at lower prices. Despite high levels of nationalism and preference for indigenous manufacture, as evidenced in high factor ratings on an ethnocentrism scale, which might indicate a positive bias towards local brands, Indian consumers were not prejudiced against foreign brand names. In fact, they evaluated them higher on technology, quality, status and esteem than Indian brands, and attributed higher credibility to those countries‐of‐origin.

This study adds to the body of knowledge about country‐of‐origin effect, in a massive and fast developing market.

The strategy of marketers of foreign brands in the Indian market should be to position their products on attributes of technology and quality, rather than economy and value for money.

Shows that ethnocentricity does not necessarily result in hostility to foreign brands.

The purpose of the current research is to determine if status and non‐status seeking Australian teenagers differ in their attitudes toward buying domestic and foreign (i.e. Italy, Japan, China) luxury brand apparel.

A total of 365 teenagers participated in this study through a self‐completed questionnaire. Fishbein's Multi‐Attribute Attitude Model was used to measure and compare attitudes toward buying domestic and foreign made apparel. Repeated measure ANOVA and t‐tests were utilized to examine whether the groups differed with regards to their attitudes toward buying luxury brand apparel, using a comparison of apparels “Made in Australia” with those “Made in Italy”, “Made in Japan” and “Made in China”.

The research findings indicate that status‐seeking teenagers have overall, a more positive attitude toward foreign luxury brand apparel as compared to Australian luxury brands, with the exception of Chinese brands. On the other hand, non‐status seeking teenagers reported that they have more positive attitude towards Australian brands than foreign brands, and consider Australian luxury brands superior to all three foreign brands with regards to ease of care and comfort.

The findings is only limited to Australian teenagers and cannot be generalized to other nationalities or age cohorts.

The study suggests that the Australian apparel industry should concentrate its marketing strategy on enhancing the attributes of “fashionable” and “brand name” of Australian apparel that both status and non‐status seeking teenagers prefer in foreign apparel.

The paper fills a gap in the literature by validating the study in Australia and focusing on the attitudes of status (and non status) seeking teenagers.

Brand crisis has become an increasingly common phenomenon recently. While corporate social responsibility (CSR) plays a role in mitigating the negative consequences of brand crisis, it is not always effective, especially for foreign companies. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the differential effects of CSR on brand crisis, considering the impact of country of origin and consumer ethnocentrism.

This study used a 2 (country of origins: domestic vs foreign) × 2 (consumer ethnocentrism: high vs low) × 2 (CSR: before vs after related information is presented) between-subjects experiment to simulate a brand crisis. A fictional WeChat Moment posting was used as a stimulus. Data from 210 Chinese respondents were analyzed.

When consumer ethnocentrism is high, the impact of CSR on consumer attitude toward the company undergoing a crisis was greater for domestic than for foreign companies. Conversely, for consumers with low ethnocentrism, the effectiveness of CSR in attenuating the negative impact of the brand crisis (i.e. the insurance-like effect of CSR) was insignificant across domestic and foreign companies.

This study extends the prior literature and clarifies the unclear results of previous studies on the effect of CSR on brand crisis by examining the impact of country of origin and consumer ethnocentrism. Novel insights into the insurance-like effect of CSR in brand crises were obtained.

This research explores the purchasing behavioural drivers of young Chinese consumers purchasing foreign clothing brands. The aim is to include a range of drivers identified by different investigations into a single approach, to determine direct and indirect channels by which these drivers influence purchasing behaviour, and their relative importance in quantitative terms.

The methodology is based on an extended version of the theory of planned behaviour that considers hypotheses based on a number of studies revised in the literature review. This theoretical framework was used as the basis for a questionnaire applied to a sample of 362 young Chinese consumers. A Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling approach was used to analyse the collected data.

The results revealed three main channels influencing purchasing behaviour which were shown to share the same root, corresponding to the influences of the social network young consumers belong to. This result suggests that social norms have a key role in explaining young consumers' purchasing behaviour through its impact on their needs for status and social recognition, their attitudes towards foreign cultures and foreign brands, and their beliefs regarding the attributes of foreign clothing.

The work therefore provides companies operating in the foreign clothing market the confidence to devise business strategies that focus on the channel demonstrating the highest influencing power. A strategy likely to have the highest influencing power is one that uses celebrities to promote the reputation of products and reinforce the messages associated with status and social recognition. Reinforcement of these strategies could include secondary strategies linked to the other channels such as the one related to the adoption of foreign cultural symbolism.

In contrast to the majority of related studies, this investigation also explores indirect channels or paths by which a behavioural driver affects the behaviour of young Chinese consumers. In fact, this investigation not only simultaneously identified the different paths influencing young Chinese consumers purchasing behaviour but also quantitatively identified their relative importance.

This study aims to examine how cultural tightness at the national level and individual level influences consumer attitudes toward a brand's wrongdoing depending on the brand's country of origin and severity of the transgression.

Employing data from two tight-culture countries (China and South Korea) and a loose-culture country (the USA), two experiments were conducted to examine the proposed hypotheses.

The authors found that although consumers across cultures universally punish strong (vs weak) transgressions more severely, consumers in a tight-culture country, China, are more forgiving of a local (vs foreign) brand in both strong and weak transgression conditions, and forgiveness is higher for the strong transgression. Moreover, this buffering effect observed for Chinese consumers is stronger for those with high personal cultural tightness in the strong transgression condition. However, it emerges only in the weak transgression condition for South Korea, another tight-culture country. As hypothesized, no buffering effect for a local brand was found in a loose-culture country, the USA. Consumers from a loose culture assess transgression severity independently, and the punishment is harsher for strong transgressions than for weak transgressions.

This study fills a research gap by revealing that consumers from tight (vs loose) cultures would react differently to brands following a transgression depending on the brand's country of origin. It provides implications by examining how national-level and individual-level cultural tightness jointly affect post-transgression attitudes. It also presents a more nuanced perspective that the local brand's buffering effect is contingent on the degree of tightness and severity of transgression, even in similar culturally tight countries.