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Market researchers often treat Asian consumers as a single entity and compare them with their Western counterparts. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast consumers in two Asian countries, Thailand and Turkey. Since global and local brands co‐exist in many regions of the world today, this study, by examining two Asian cultures, examines the impact of personality traits and values on individuals' intentions to purchase global versus local brands. The authors also investigate the role of priming (local versus global cues) in the relationship between these individual traits and purchase intentions.

The study involves a series of pretests and an experiment conducted among 240 participants from Thailand and 142 participants from Turkey. Though exploratory in nature, content analysis also suggests interesting avenues for future research.

The findings suggest that although both societies are perceived as traditional and collective, consumers from both Thai and Turkish cultures exhibit some striking differences. There were differences in the ways in which individual traits and values impacted global vs local brand purchase intentions. For instance, while it was discovered that traditionalism and susceptibility were important among Thai individuals, ethnocentrism and materialism were at similar levels in both samples. Traditionalism had an important effect on intentions to purchase local brands in Thailand, while it did not have a very meaningful impact among Turks. Similarly, in Thailand, susceptibility affected global brand purchase intentions. However, a similar pattern was not seen among Turks.

The research is valuable in understanding that two seemingly similar Asian cultures (Thailand and Turkey) are – in effect – dissimilar on key variables such as traditionalism and ethnocentrism and that impacts how these two cultures perceive global and local brands. As marketers aim to satisfy consumer's needs by offering goods and services, it is extremely important to understand consumers' evaluations of these brands and how these perceptions are formed in the first place. Such an understanding will help marketers in their positioning strategies as well as marketing communications design.

This study aims to investigate how brand innovativeness and national traditions influence perceived brand globalness and brand competence by affecting Brand-Nation Connection (BNC) in the changing world.

Besides the study of the development and validation of the BNC construct, this paper conducts two studies that use eight global brands from different categories to test hypotheses.

Two empirical studies show that brand innovativeness and national traditions have positive effects on BNC. Furthermore, technological turbulence moderates the impact of brand innovativeness on BNC, and cultural change moderates the relationship between national traditions and BNC. Meanwhile, BNC is an important determinant of perceived brand globalness, and both BNC and perceived brand globalness positively influence brand competence, with the former exerting a stronger effect.

The findings highlight that in the changing world, the coexistence of brand innovation and cultural traditions through strategic management is essential for brand competence. They also provide guidelines for emerging global brands to incorporate nation-related cues and global signals in their brand positioning to reinforce brand competence.

This study contributes to understanding how brand innovation and cultural traditions create value for emerging global brands in a rapidly changing environment. It also provides implications regarding how BNC helps emerging market brands to go global, and it presents a new understanding that both nation-level brand status and perceived brand globalness are signals that convey brand competence.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of brand credibility on purchase intentions toward global brands and domestic brands in an emerging market context. It further examines three drivers of brand credibility: perceived globalness, perceived local iconness and perceived authenticity.

A structured questionnaire was used for data collection. Systematic random sampling using the mall intercept technique was used to collect cross-sectional data from 836 customers in India. Hypotheses were tested by using structural equation modeling with AMOS 21.

The results demonstrate the significance of brand credibility on purchase intentions. Furthermore, brand globalness differentially influence brand credibility for global and domestic brands.

The findings provide key insights for marketers regarding consumer evaluation of global brands and domestic brands in emerging markets.

This study contributes to the literature by proposing and testing the key role of brand credibility in consumer choice of global brands versus domestic brands in an emerging market context.

The purpose of this paper is to represent the first empirical attempt to explore global-local consumer identities as drivers of global digital brand usage. Specifically, this study considers a unique category of digital products, social networking sites (SNS), and develops a set of hypotheses to assess the mechanism through which location-based identities influence the actual usage of global SNS (Facebook and Instagram). Moreover, cross-country variations are investigated under the lens of developed vs developing countries.

Cross-country surveys in a developed (Austria) and a developing country (Thailand) were conducted. Data collected from 425 young adults were analyzed using SEM techniques in order to test a set of hypotheses.

Results show that in Thailand, users with a global identity enjoy participating in global SNS more than their counterparts in Austria. In addition, consumers with a local identity in Thailand demonstrate less pleasure when participating in global SNS than their counterparts in Austria, and consequently are less inclined to use global SNS.

Findings provide digital marketers with useful insights into important strategic decisions regarding the selection and potential adaptation of global digital brands according to the country context.

This research is the first to extend the location-based identity research in the context of global digital brands, explain how global-local identities predict SNS usage through an engagement mechanism and investigate cross-country variations of this mechanism.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether or not the strategy of pursuing a global brand identity by leading Asian firms will produce intended outcomes in consumer responses. For this purpose, the study empirically examines whether global Japanese brands (e.g. Toyota) are perceived as global or Japanese by consumers.

Surveys were conducted with Korean consumers for their evaluations of Japanese automobile brands with varying degrees of globalness. As for brands, the study divides Japanese brands into two groups – those with high brand globalness and those with low brand globalness – and to examine if Japanese-origin effects differ between these two groups.

In contrast to the hypothesis, global brands were found to be more subject to country-of-origin effects.

The findings contribute to research on consumer choices and brand globalness by showing country-of-origin effects for global brands.

The findings suggest that even when Asian firms emphasize the globalness of their brands, they may still need to attend to country-of-origin effects.

This study examines an unexplored issue of country-of-origin effects for global brands.

The purpose of this study is to investigate hybrid brand positioning strategies for emerging market brands based on two positioning elements: brand country-of-origin (COO) and brand globalness.

Researchers conducted two studies. In Study 1, a survey of 128 brand managers of emerging market brands were used to examine whether asymmetric positioning strategies improve brand preference more than symmetric strategies, and if so, which type of asymmetric strategies improves brand preference more. In Study 2, a consumer experiment in the USA was conducted to identify the positioning strategy for emerging market brands that improve brand preference the most.

For emerging market brands, at any given value of COO or global elements, asymmetric strategies outperform symmetric strategies in terms of brand preference. On average, the best hybrid positioning strategy is the one that highlights brand COO and de-emphasizes brand globalness.

A large body of branding literature examines COO and globalness separately without considering their co-presence in the same brand positioning strategy. Few studies that examine the joint influence of brand COO and globalness focus on established brands from developed markets and do not examine whether highlighting both brand COO and global elements equally is an effective positioning strategy for emerging market brands. This study introduces a framework to systematically examine the various combinations of COO and global elements in a brand’s positioning strategies for emerging market brands. By conducting two studies, the authors empirically test the influence of various combinations of COO and global elements on brand preference for emerging market brands from both firm and consumer perspectives.

There is general agreement that global brands should ensure that they incorporate social responsibility. To do this properly, organisations must understand what it means to be socially responsible and how they can leverage their actions. The paper proposes consideration of three distinct areas: the range of social responsibility issues, what the organisations actually do and how to leverage those corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions. This paper seeks to conceptually develop these three areas of complexity – Issue, Organisational and Communication – as it is only after organisations understand these three areas that they can effectively leverage socially responsible activities in their brands.

This research undertakes a review and synthesis of the academic, practitioner and industry literature examining CSR and the brand, addressing the three areas of complexity – issue, organisational and communication.

The research finds that within these three areas of complexity there are a number of sub‐issues that must be addressed if CSR is to be strategically integrated into a global brand. This includes sub‐issues associated with social issue complexity (identification, heterogeneity, measurement, and interpretation); organizational complexity (overall corporate brand, multiple products and brands, functional activities, and supply chain); and communication complexity (intensity of action/positioning, communicating action, types of programs utilised, and integration issues.) It thus provides an agenda for future research.

There is limited academic literature examining how global organisations incorporate CSR activities into their brand and the research proposes the issues that need to be considered when integrating CSR into branding strategy. Future research needs to be undertaken to explore the internal processes that global firms use to develop their CSR positioning strategies and some research propositions for future research are proposed. Additionally further exploration of each of the issues (and sub‐issues) identified in this paper is warranted, and some suggestions are made for this.

The results of this study show that developing a CSR leveraged brand in a consistent way that is salient to all stakeholders is no simple task for global organisations. By considering the three areas of complexity developed here organisations will be able to better understand and align their activities in line with CSR related issues. Being global means that organisations will likely need to ensure they address the highest set of global expectations, as any lower level may be criticised as being less than appropriate.

The paper develops the sub‐issues of issue, organisational and communication complexity associated with global brands' CSR activities. This strategic perspective goes beyond focusing on the tactical activities undertaken or the philosophical issue of whether CSR should be undertaken. The work therefore allows global organisations to look at CSR more strategically as a branding issue.

There is a lacuna in research work in terms of understanding how Indian IT organizations can become global brands. Benchmarking has not received much attention in marketing literature due to lack of benchmarking framework, and IT organizations are yet to make progress in benchmarking. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of brand strength on global branding by developing a conceptual benchmarking framework for Indian IT organizations.

Semi-structured in-depth interviews are conducted with thirty middle-level managers from two Indian IT organizations, two US-based global IT organizations and one UK-based leading bank, which is a customer of these IT organizations.

Results show a positive relationship between brand strength and global branding, between customer loyalty and global branding, between brand loyalty and competitive advantage and between global branding and competitive advantage. Indian IT organizations can benchmark global IT organizations to improve delivering brand promise, positioning, awareness building and authenticity toward making Indian IT organizations future ready to address the entire breadth of opportunities in the evolving world of cloud and digital.

This research helps managers with a brand strength-based benchmarking framework toward global branding of Indian IT organizations.

IT is instrumental for rapid growth of Indian’s economy. India should optimally utilize its greatest wealth, its human potential, with the latent global demand in IT through building global IT brands.

The originality of the study lies in conducting a qualitative study on global branding of Indian IT organizations and also proposing a conceptual benchmarking framework. The study further validates the model using qualitative analysis.

This paper aims at investigating the contemporary trend toward regional consumption from the perspective of consumers’ search for brand authenticity. In particular, the paper joins literature on brand authenticity from the marketing literature and literature on the local food movement to investigate consumers’ response to authenticity claims in the competition of local and global food brands.

The paper engages in a series of three experimental studies; one of which uses a Becker–DeGroot–Marschak lottery to assess individuals’ willingness to pay for authenticity claims of (non)global brands.

Findings show that authenticity perceptions lead to higher brand value independent of brand globalness; while global brands can mitigate competitive disadvantages in localized consumer markets by actively authenticating their brand image.

This paper reveals the usefulness of authentic brand positioning for global beverage brands when competing with local beverage brands to overcome the liability of globalness. To sustainably benefit from the local food movement, local brands thus will require to build up brand images beyond associations of mere authenticity.

The purpose of this paper is to re-conceptualize the distinction between global and local brands, providing a more comprehensive framework, which considers both geographical distribution and ownership. It examines main and interactive effects of consumers’ perceptions of these factors, and studies how ethnocentrism (CET) and price affect brand evaluations, considering a range of price difference thresholds.

A preliminary study (n=243) examined main and interaction effects of brand globalness and ownership on consumers’ brand quality attitudes and purchase intentions in four different product categories. The main study (n=558) further explored brand ownership effects by examining the interaction of CET and price differences.

The preliminary study confirmed the distinctiveness of brand globalness and ownership. Consumers evaluated global (vs non-global) brands more positively, regardless of brand ownership (local vs foreign). The main study found that effects of price and CET varied considerably across product categories.

Limitations include the use of student samples from a single country (Thailand), and of scenarios instead of real life purchase decisions.

The findings suggest that perceived brand globalness positively impacts brand evaluations. Companies may cultivate a global brand image by emphasizing global cues. Local origin allows (global) brands to command a price premium, although this varies across product categories. An emphasis on globalness seems valuable, especially for local brands.

This research offers a refined conceptualization of brand globalness, a key construct in international marketing. Additional value is provided by studying price effects, which have received limited attention in international marketing, and substantial data collection (total N>800) in an understudied yet important economy (Thailand).