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This study attempted to empirically test a debatable hypothesis that globalization entails homogenization in consumers’ mind and behavior. Using samples from two countries (USA, n = 120 and Korea, n= 128), this study explored a path model centered on consumers’ reluctance to purchase foreign goods. The findings indicated that, in the US sample only, consumer ethnocentrism plays a mediating role between global openness and the reluctance to buy, although it is on the decrease with the increasing level of global openness. Consumer ethnocentrism is still an important factor in determining the magnitude of reluctance to buy a foreign product in both samples, while product judgment also plays an important role, but only in a certain cultural context (i.e. the USA). It is concluded, therefore, that consumers in a different culture, who are different in their attitudes and perceptions, tastes and preferences, and values, are still different even after being exposed to the massive wave of globalization.

This study aims to clarify the relationship between two plausible conflicting attitudes in cross-cultural context-consumer affinity and consumer ethnocentrism (CET) and to explore their interactive effect on product trust and willingness-to-buy.

A total of 392 usable responses were obtained. Previously validated scales of consumer affinity, CET, product trust and willingness-to-buy were used and showed good reliability. Hierarchical multiple regression and the bootstrapping method were conducted to test the hypotheses.

This study revealed that consumer affinity is positively associated with product trust, which in turn promotes consumers’ intention to buy products from the affinity country; CET moderates the relationship between consumer affinity and product trust; and CET also moderates the mediating effect of product trust on the relationship between consumer affinity and willingness-to-buy.

First, this study helps to explain how consumer affinity boosts willingness-to-buy, and it reveals the type of consumers whose product trust is most notably influenced by their level of ethnocentrism. Second, this study examines the moderating effects of CET on the relationship between consumer affinity and product trust, which can help to identify the situations in which consumer affinity influences product trust most strongly. Third, this study examined the interactive effect of consumer affinity and CET on product trust and its subsequent effect on willingness-to-buy. The findings help to explain the CET’s critical role in the effect of consumer affinity by relating it to the literature of product trust and willingness-to-buy.

Given the crucial role that consumer affinity plays in improving consumers’ trust in and buying intention for a country’s products, governments, multinational enterprises and international marketers should strategically construct, maintain and magnify a positive national image to the world. This study’s results also clarify that consumer affinity does not conflict with CET; not only can they coexist but also they are positively related. The crucial implication is that CET is not always a barrier to purchasing foreign products.

Although research interest in consumer attitudinal conflict issues is increasing, the real relationship and interactive effects of plausible conflicting attitudes between consumer affinity and CET remain to be understood. This study bridges a gap between CET and willingness-to-buy by considering the boundary conditions of consumer attitudes toward a specific country (inherent in consumer affinity). Furthermore, this study is, to the best of the author’s knowledge, the first to link consumer affinity with willingness-to-buy through the mediating effect of product trust. These findings are helpful for understanding how consumer affinity positively effects willingness-to-buy.

This study aims to investigate how the social identity theory and emotional attachment theory influence the willingness of consumers to buy foreign cosmetic products. Specifically, this study examines the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism, foreign product judgment and willingness to buy foreign products. Furthermore, the interaction effect of consumer affinity and patriotism are tested in the model.

An online survey of 208 millennial Muslim women consumers was used to collect the data. The structural equation modeling test was used to assess the six hypotheses. Moreover, the two-step estimation approach was used to test the interaction moderation of consumer affinity and patriotism.

The results indicate that consumer ethnocentrism has a positive and significant relationship with foreign product judgment. Foreign product judgment was also found to have a positive and significant relationship with willingness to buy. In addition, this study concludes that affinity was found to moderate the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and foreign product judgment and strengthen the positive and significant effect of foreign product judgment on the willingness to buy. Finally, patriotism did not moderate the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and foreign product judgment. However, patriotism moderated the relationship between foreign product judgment and willingness to buy.

This study only focused on one category (i.e. low involvement product), and the authors recommend future studies to examine a high involvement product. Other individual orientation constructs, such as xenocentrism, need to be examined in future studies. Moreover, only intentional measures were investigated. Thus, further research could correlate intentional measures with product ownership. Finally, future research could examine how consumers behave differently across nations. Thus, the present model would require cross-cultural research.

Marketers focusing on global branding and international marketing can benefit from the findings of this paper by understanding the antecedents of consumers’ willingness to buy in the foreign cosmetic products setting. Additionally, foreign cosmetic marketers could focus on consumer affinity to strengthen the communication with and arouse the affinity of Muslim millennials women consumers in Indonesia. Finally, marketers can incorporate messages and signals of patriotism in their marketing communications to increase Muslim millennial women consumers’ love and pride.

The growing obsession with beauty among women has led to the immense growth of the cosmetics industry. This phenomenon has spawned an abundance of cosmetic products on the market. The advancement of information technology has further increased competition for cosmetic products as more products can be quickly brought to market. Muslim millennials consumers must be aware and careful about raw materials, impacts on long-term health, impacts on the national economy, environmental impacts and halal certification when using various kinds of cosmetics.

This study contributes to the literature on international marketing research by incorporating the interactive effect of consumer affinity and patriotism in the acceptance of foreign cosmetic products.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated model of Taiwanese consumers' willingness to buy from China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Using 284 completed questionnaires, LISREL and multi‐group analysis were employed to examine the relationships among country image, product beliefs, affect, familiarity, world‐mindedness, and willingness to buy.

The empirical research results showed that country image has no direct influence on Taiwanese consumers' willingness to buy, but it has indirect influence on Taiwanese consumers' willingness to buy via product beliefs. However, affect has both direct and indirect influence on Taiwanese consumers' willingness to buy, and affect is observed to have stronger influence on product belief than on Taiwanese consumers' willingness to buy.

Taiwanese enterprises having ongoing mass production in China are recommended to prominently feature their original Taiwanese brand names and technology cooperation with developed countries to build up positive country image.

By introducing the concept of world‐mindedness, this research generalized the conclusion drawn by earlier research in the context of Taiwan.

Consumer animosity is often used to explain consumers' boycott of products from a foreign country in a dispute. However, these studies are mainly cross‐sectional. The purpose of this paper is to investigate temporal changes in two distinct consumer‐animosity dimensions – i.e. historical and contemporary – and their influences on judgment of and willingness‐to‐buy foreign products.

Sampling came from a mall‐intercept survey in Japan during the height of a recent Japan‐China dispute (n=139), followed by a similar survey six months later (n=157). Identical questionnaires tapped Japanese consumers' historical animosity (HA), contemporary animosity (CA) and ethnocentrism dispositions, and judgment of and willingness to buy Chinese products. The data were fitted using structural equation modelling.

The results indicate that both CA and HA lowered willingness to buy Chinese products during, but not after, the dispute. CA was consistently stronger than HA in influencing willingness to buy. By contrast, product judgment did not influence willingness to buy during the dispute. That is, animosity dispositions overshadowed objective product evaluation during the dispute. After the dispute, only product judgment directly influenced willingness to buy, and HA indirectly influenced willingness to buy via product judgment. CA weakened after the dispute, but HA remained stable over time. Product judgment was lower during the dispute. Consumer ethnocentrism interacted only with CA during but not after the dispute.

International dispute heightens the salience of present‐day issues such as unemployment rather than of historical conflicts. Although product judgment was affected, the downside to foreign firms is temporary. Domestic firms can only take short‐term advantage, but long‐term edge remains improving product judgment.

Despite extensive research into the influence of consumer animosity on consumer behaviour, surprisingly little research has attempted to investigate the temporal characteristics of the consumer animosity, let alone investigate its distinct dimensions. In this study, the authors attempt to show that unless one considers the potential temporal changes to individual consumer‐animosity dimensions, sweeping conclusions from single‐shot studies may yield an incomplete picture and even misguide managerial initiatives.

This research seeks to extend the animosity model of foreign product purchase by examining the direct and moderating effects of cultural similarity in consumers' product judgment and willingness to buy foreign products.

Empirical data were collected from a sample (n=225) of Taiwanese consumers. The data analysis used bivariate correlations, repeated general linear modeling, and structural equation modeling.

Cultural similarity between consumers' home country (region) and a foreign product's country of origin has: a positive impact on consumers' product evaluation and willingness to buy foreign products; a weakening effect on the negative impact of war and economic animosity on willingness to buy foreign products; and a weakening effect on the negative impact of consumer ethnocentrism on their willingness to buy foreign products.

This study not only enriches the animosity model of foreign product purchase, but also offers additional insights for international market entry and international marketing strategies.

This study aims to examine animosity's role in determining consumers' product choices. Considerable research attention has been devoted to studying the relationship between animosity and consumers' willingness to buy foreign products. Few studies, however, have considered that individual consumers may harbor varying degrees of animosity toward different countries, thus, differentially affecting their willingness to buy products from these countries. The within‐subject comparison of the present study seeks to provide a clearer and cleaner approach to examining the impact of animosity on consumers' preferences for foreign products. Extending this line of inquiry, it also aims to explore the link between consumers' choice of products from high versus low animosity countries at different price levels.

Two studies were conducted to examine the impact of consumer animosity on product choice. Study 1 contains a survey study, and Study 2 is a full factorial conjoint analysis.

It is discovered that animosity plays a stronger role in determining consumers' willingness to buy foreign products from high‐level animosity countries than from low‐level animosity countries. Through conjoint analysis, the paper demonstrates that consumers are willing to make trade‐offs between price and animosity.

This study fills a void in the literature by exploring what role animosity plays in determining a consumer's choice of products, particularly when different degrees of animosity are held toward different countries. The within‐subject design of this research provides considerable insight on this front. In addition, this study represents an initial attempt to explore the dynamics between animosity and price via a conjoint analysis.

While the idea that consumer ethnocentrism influences the willingness to buy domestic products is a well-known assumption for marketers, the purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating effect of consumer ethnocentrism on the willingness to buy domestic products in developing countries.

Hierarchical moderator regression analysis and simple slope analysis are used to test the postulated hypotheses, and 385 consumers in Taiwan are studied.

The findings revealed that consumer ethnocentrism, perceived quality, perceived price and perceived brand image are significantly associated with the willingness to buy domestic products. Moreover, consumer ethnocentrism significantly moderates the relationships of the model.

Consumer ethnocentrism increases the positive effects of perceived quality and perceived brand image on the willingness to buy domestic products in developing countries, whereas it may increase the negative effect of perceived price on the willingness to buy domestic products.

The results of this study suggest that practitioners should not only improve the quality and brand image of domestic products but also avoid putting a high price on domestic products to increase the willingness to buy domestic products for consumers in developing countries.

This study advances the consumer ethnocentrism theory by adding the moderating effect of consumer ethnocentrism to the model.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand an increasingly widespread practice consisting, of a brand, in signaling the domestic origin of its products aimed at domestic consumers, that is, the “made in the domestic country” (MIDC) strategy. To this end, it is proposed to analyze the MIDC label as a cue interacting with the brand’s characteristics (brand equity and country of origin of the brand).

A between-subjects experiment is conducted among 293 French consumers on four different brands of pasta. The overall design is a 2 (with/without the MIDC label) × 2 (high/low brand equity) × 2 (domestic/foreign brand) mixed design.

The results show that intention to buy the product increases significantly with the presence of the MIDC label, but not so willing to pay. The positive effect on buying intention is greater when: the product has rather low brand equity, consumer ethnocentrism is high and/or consumers are strongly attached to their national identity.

The present research extends the literature on country-of-origin effects by taking into account the role of the brand equity of the product. However, the study focused on only one low-involvement product category (pasta) and one country (France).

This study shows that adding an MIDC label to the product is empirically justified.

While moderate or high scores on “patriotic” variables reinforce the positive impact of the MIDC label, low scores reverse the trend, that is, cause rejection.

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the effects of religiosity level, ethnocentrism, subjective norms, product judgment and trust in Halal food products on the consumer intention to purchase a Muslim (manufactured in a majority Muslim country) versus a foreign (manufactured in a majority non-Muslim country) product available on the Lebanese market across the two main Muslim sects, namely, Sunnism and Shiism.

The study used a quantitative survey that was administered to a proportionate stratified sample of 607 respondents from the two sects.

The results indicate that Sunni consumers indicate a greater trust in judgment of and willingness to buy foreign Halal products compared to their Shiite counterparts, while Shiite consumers display a greater trust in judgment of and willingness to buy Muslim products. Moreover, religiosity, ethnocentrism, subjective norms, brand trust and product judgment have been found to significantly influence consumer purchase intention.

The study results exhibit that religious sect plays a key role in consumer purchase intention, which encourages decision makers and marketers to pursue identity, awareness and communication strategies while targeting Muslim consumers of both sects.

Muslim consumers’ perception of Halal products is a sorely under-researched area of study with minimal empirical data supporting such studies. The results of this study offer some insight into consumer behavior differences between members of the two sects.