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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.

Migration shapes our societies, values, markets, consumption and even the notion of self. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of migration in the perception-of-self and if differences in the perception-of-self influence the perception of brands from the immigrants’ home country – which immigrants often use as a cultural anchor.

Using Aaker’s (1997) brand personality scale as a measure of brand image, the authors gather data from Mexico City and the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area. Respondents to an interviewer-administered questionnaire were asked to evaluate the brand image of two TV media Mexican brands and their perception-of-self based on Aaker’s 42 brand personality traits.

The results of this paper indicate that the perception-of-self is different for Latinos residing in their home country and immigrant Latinos living abroad. Further, these differences in the perception-of-self appear to influence the way immigrants perceive brands from their home country.

Brands from emerging markets making inroads into developed markets, targeting their country’s diasporas as their first target group, should understand whether people’s perception-of-self differs significantly from their home country counterparts, the direction of such a difference and the effect of such differences on the perceptions of brands from their home country.

This paper is a contribution to the brand personality, brand image and self literature and presents an innovative approach to analyzing the possible brand image implications of the expansion of multinational companies and immigration.

This study links ethnic identity and global identity with perceptions of brand globalness (BG) and brand local iconness (BLI) regarding home country brands. Identity Theory considers consumer behavior as driven by multiple identities concurrently and interactively.

Samples from two populations, Mexicans living in Mexico and Mexican Americans in the United States, were exposed to eight randomly presented real-world Mexican brands, followed by existing measures for several constructs. Comparing such populations is uniquely appealing for studies of immigrants’ home country brands. Data is analyzed via linear regression.

Ethnic and global identities have an interactive effect on BG, BLI, and purchase intention even after controlling for ethnocentrism and cosmopolitanism. With the interaction term between ethnic identity and global identity included in the model, (a) global identity exhibits more efficacy than ethnic identity in explaining purchase intention; and (b) relationships involving BLI grow stronger while those involving BG become weaker. The direction of the effect of global identity depends on whether BG or BLI serves as the mediator. Ethnic identity has a significant effect on purchase intention through BLI among Mexican Americans.

Simultaneous focus on two interacting identities is novel in the international branding space. This approach is useful for illuminating the effects of brand attributes including BG and BLI as well as studying branding effects where self-symbolizing is of interest.

This study aims to focus on the internal audiences of a nation brand, i.e. the citizens of a country and is built on the theoretical premise that migration intentions (MIs) prevalent among the skilled and educated elite of a home country signifies a weak nation brand.

Through the theoretical support of the migration motive theory of push and pull (Richmond, 1993), nation branding theory (Anholt, 2006) and the two-construct country image model (Roth and Diamantopoulos, 2009), the authors constructed a framework that incorporates the relationship between affective and cognitive country images of both home and migrant country and migration motives and intentions to migrate.

The findings reveal that push and pull factors are strongly affected by the images of the home country and the migrant country, respectively and strong home country images are associated with weak MIs, while the opposite is true if a strong migrant country image is possessed. Further, evidence of the dominance effect of cognitive images in complex decision-making environments such as migration was also provided. Moreover, the results also suggest significant differences between Chinese and Pakistani respondents.

This study guides nation branding researchers by opening up a debate on self-images and conceptually independent attitudinal constructs of country image. For policymakers in developing countries, the results reveal that they should primarily strengthen their internal brands and focus on cognitive images to stem the flow of brain drain.

This study takes the traditional country image debate to migration discourse, moves it forward, contextualizes it as a function of a nation’s brand strength and provides evidence that confluence of migration studies with the theoretical stream of nation branding can provide significant explanations for migrant behavior.

This study aims to investigate how brand name (home-emerging-country vs foreign-developed-country brand name) applied by emerging market company in conjunction with revealing the actual country-of-brand-origin (COBO) (revealed vs non-revealed origin from developed vs emerging country) affects purchase intensions of durable goods.

An experimental conjoint analysis and multilevel linear models were applied.

Results demonstrate that brand name differentiates consumers’ purchase intentions. However, not every foreign-developed-country brand name may lead to the increase of purchase intentions. Revealing the actual emerging market’s COBO for brands with developed-country brand name may lead to lowering purchase intentions. Moreover, consumer ethnocentrism and materialism moderate the relationship between the brand type in terms of brand name and purchase intentions.

This study contributes to the international marketing literature by simultaneous examination of the impact of brand name type and revealing actual COBO on purchase intentions and the moderating effects of ethnocentrism and materialism, in emerging markets’ context. It also offers novel insights for brand managers regarding the influence of emerging markets’ companies branding strategies on consumer purchase intentions.

With competitive rivalry eroding traditional product differentiation, legally protected brands have gradually become one of the most prized assets of multinational corporations. The defense of domestic brand shares and the expansion of well-known brands into new foreign markets have become important tasks of corporate managers. Yet, to date, there is no clear recognition of this increasing role of brands in the economic theory of international trade. This paper explores the implications of strong brands for intra-industry trade, for Vernon’s product-cycle model and for international trade overall. On balance, the ascent of global brands is shown to raise trade in standardized products, exacerbate the shift toward intra-firm trade, and sustain the dominance by large centralized multinationals.

Drawing from the entitativity theory, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the European Union (EU) as a superordinate entity and investigate the extent to which a “Made-in-EU” designation leads to superior/inferior brand evaluations and through them to higher/lower purchase intentions than different country-specific designations.

Prior literature and qualitative interviews with consumers are used to generate several propositions regarding the role of the EU as a brand origin. These are subsequently tested in a series of four experimental studies using a common design but different country-specific origins as stimuli.

While a “Made-in-EU” designation is interpreted as a quality signal, linking a brand to the EU fails to generate positive affective associations. Furthermore, the exact impact of a “Made-in-EU” brand designation very much depends on the standard of comparison, that is, the specific country against which the EU is evaluated.

Superordinate designations such as the EU can indeed represent distinct entities in consumers’ minds which strongly impact their perceptions and intended behavior.

Moving from a “home country” label to a “Made-in-EU” label is not advisable for owners of domestic brands. For foreign brands from EU countries with an unfavorable country image, adopting a “Made-in-EU” label is worth considering since it can strengthen quality perceptions. However, any quality advantage might be offset by weaker brand affect perceptions.

The concept of entitativity introduces a new conceptual lens in the context of origin research which – almost exclusively – has previously focused on the individual country as the unit of analysis.

Extensive research has shown that country‐of‐origin (COO) information significantly affects product evaluations and buying behavior. Yet recently, a competing perspective has emerged suggesting that COO effects have been inflated in prior research and even that the COO concept has become irrelevant. The purpose of this paper is to reconcile these two competing perspectives by examining the effects of individual brand origin perceptions.

The conceptual framework is grounded in consumers’ learning. Empirically, the authors’ hypotheses are tested using hierarchical linear modeling on a sample of 4,047 brand evaluations by 544 consumers.

The results provide strong evidence that product country image of the consumer's perceived brand origin strongly affects brand attitudes, and this happens regardless of the perceptions’ objective accuracy. The authors also find evidence that educating consumers about brands’ true COO can contribute to changes in brand attitudes.

It is concluded that suggestions that COO has become an irrelevant construct in international marketing may be premature. The study offers meaningful insights for managers in understanding how brands’ country associations affect brand attitudes.

This study aims to reconcile tensions in the current COO literature and does so by demonstrating that although consumer knowledge of brand origin is often mis‐calibrated, consumers’ perceptions of brand origin still matter.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of cross-border acquisitions on brand image dimensions (functional, symbolic and global image) of the acquirer brand from a consumer’s perspective.

The authors measured Chinese consumers’ perceptions of eight fictitious cross-border acquisition scenarios and tested the hypotheses by using multiple hierarchical regression.

First, the acquisition significantly improves functional, symbolic and global image of the acquirer brand. Second, both image perceptions of the acquirer and the acquired brands before acquisition significantly impact post-image of the acquirer. The effect is greater for pre-image of the acquirer (dominance effect). Finally, brand fit, product fit and country-of-origin fit influence attitude toward the acquisition significantly.

There are limitations in the generalizations of the findings due to its reliance on a single country (China) and one industry (home appliances).

First, engaging in cross-border acquisitions significantly enhances the brand image of the acquirer brand. The global image has the largest improvement. Second, practitioners should carefully consider different levels of fit before the acquisition.

This study contributes to the extant literature by investigating brand acquisitions from the perspective of home country consumers (acquirer) and integrating multiple brand image dimensions and various levels of fit simultaneously.