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Consumer animosity toward a foreign country can affect negatively international brands. Existing international marketing research offers inconsistent accounts of the factors that explain product quality perceptions, negative word of mouth (NWOM) and product avoidance in animosity contexts. This paper aims to demonstrate that such inconsistency is caused by the fact that different explanations apply to different consumer subgroups. Searching for a single solution, thus, leads to erroneous predictions for sizable subgroups of consumers.

The study implements a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to two quantitative surveys examining Chinese consumers’ (n = 476) reactions to Japanese products and American consumers’ (n = 517) reactions to Chinese products.

The analysis yields novel explanations of the outcomes of animosity. Only in some causal configurations reduced quality evaluations explain product avoidance and NWOM, while in others negative behaviors co-exist with positive quality perceptions. Moreover, negative emotions’ role varies across forms of animosity. While anger is often associated with the behavioral outcomes of animosity, fear plays an important role in only a few specific combinations.

General models of animosity need to be complemented with accounts that examine the multiple mechanisms underpinning animosity outcomes.

Marketers should identify which animosity model applies to their consumer segment(s) as different mechanisms require different marketing approaches.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study recognizing that the same animosity outcomes are explained by multiple mechanisms offering a more nuanced picture of the motivations associated with consumer animosity.

While there have always been cultural differences between countries and between individuals, the virtualisation of markets is rendering the impact of these differences even more salient. There is clear evidence that cultural dimensions are relevant in the adoption and use of e-commerce. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the significant effects of individual cultural dimensions on perceived product quality, perceived risk and purchase intention in e-commerce platforms.

A questionnaire was developed to serve as a tool of measurement. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to examine whether all the indicators for the constructs are reliable. A multiple regression analysis was carried out to test the hypotheses.

The results reveal that, in the case of e-commerce platforms, the cultural dimensions uncertainty-avoidance and collectivism exert a significant influence on perceived product quality, perceived risk and purchase intention.

The present study is based on real well-known e-commerce platforms which could have influenced the responses of the sample due to potential past experiences of use. An experimental design based on fictitious platforms could offer more objective findings.

This research contributes to the understanding of e-commerce and the behaviour of consumers during online purchasing, taking into account the cultural differences that may exist between them.

The literature on individual cultural dimensions – that is, non-national cases – and the variables analysed in the present study suffers from great limitations. This study complements a growing interest in analysing the individual cultural dimensions and their effects on the sphere of e-commerce, specifically on perceived product quality, purchase intention and perceived risk during browsing, measured in terms of the six types of risk prevalent in e-commerce platforms.

The purpose of this study is to use role expectation theory to identify potential determinants of user voting avoidance on mobile social media.

Data were collected through a survey of 602 WeChat users, and the proposed model was analysed using structural equation modelling.

Results indicate that user voting avoidance was positively influenced by unfair competition, perceived inauthenticity, perceived information insecurity, over-consumption of renqing (a unique Chinese human relation) and organisation placement in the context of mobile social media.

This study illustrates mobile user voting avoidance from the perspective of role expectation theory and clarifies the importance of avoidance in current voting research.

This research aims to determine the relationship between the consumption of animal products and attitudes towards animals among university students in Eurasia.

A survey was conducted with collaborators in each country who supervised volunteers to personally invite 16,777 students to take part. The sample was composed of 3,433 students from 103 universities in 11 Eurasian countries. ANOVA was used to compare the responses. All analyses were conducted using the statistical packages Minitab 15 and SPSS 15.

A total of 47 per cent of university students avoided some meat products, 4 per cent were vegetarians and 0.4 per cent vegans. Students avoiding some meat did so principally for environmental and health reasons, and beef and lamb were the meats most likely to be avoided. Vegetarians avoided meat mainly for health reasons. Vegans had greater concern about humans using animals than vegetarians, who in turn had greater concerns than those avoiding some meat.

Avoidance of animal products was related to an increased level of concern for animal rights, animal experimentation and wildlife, with vegans demonstrating the greatest concern. This implied that students' attitudes to animal welfare and rights can affect animal product‐eating behaviours.

This study conflicts with previous studies by demonstrating that health rather than environment was a major reason for vegetarianism. The study highlights the importance of environmental, health and welfare concerns but not religion in avoidance of animal products.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a form of anti-consumption termed moral avoidance.

The study builds and tests a model of moral avoidance, using a sample (n=457) of adults aged 50-94 years.

Two distinct forms of this type of anti-consumption emerged, one based on exploitation of eco-systems and one on exploitation of humans. Ecology concerns and perceived consumer effectiveness are significant antecedents to both forms, while ethical ideology also impacts anti-consumption for social reasons. Greater numbers practice this form of anti-consumption for social reasons than for ecology reasons.

The study uncovers new underlying reasons why people practice moral avoidance and in so doing guides managers in their targeting and decision making.

The study is the first to demonstrate that this form of anti-consumption has two different perspectives: planet and people. Moreover, older adults are important ethical consumers, but no previous study has explored them from an anti-consumption perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss the concept of brand hate. The authors present a taxonomy of the main determinants and outcomes of brand hate and empirically assess our model.

A survey design using cross-sectional primary data from 224 German consumers was used. Hypotheses related to determinants and outcomes of brand hate were tested by means of structural equation modelling.

Findings show that brand hate is triggered by three determinants (negative past experience, symbolic incongruity, ideological incompatibility) and leads to three behavioral outcomes (brand avoidance, negative word-of mouth, brand retaliation).

This paper explores and outlines theoretically and empirically the determinants and outcomes of brand hate. It also provides a useful taxonomy of brand hate.

Presents the results of an empirical investigation into whether the attribution by members of the public of an unfavourable reputational trait (e.g. dishonesty) to a company covaries with other traits ascribed to the same enterprise. Additionally it examines whether people aggregate successive pieces of unfavourable information received about a business to form a continuously worsening impression of it; or whether they mentally average bad news, so that successive adverse items can actually improve the overall impression – provided the later messages are not as damaging as the earlier ones. The study is based on the UK pensions mis‐selling scandal, which generated severe, long‐term media criticism of the large UK insurance companies. Hence it analyses a unique reputational management situation in that the firms involved are subject to continuous and intense scrutiny, protracted and hostile media coverage, periodic public censure by regulatory authorities, and interference in day‐to‐day management by government agencies. The proposition that pensions are an “avoidance product” is also explored.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a multidimensional understanding of the management of feedback from customer product returns and the management practices that lead to the occurrence of product returns in the context of knowledge management. The characteristics of product returns indicate that to manage them requires specific knowledge management, as the nature of their management is rather complex.

Understanding of feedback concept for the purpose of product returns avoidance management and its linkages with knowledge management through the theoretical review was performed first. Second, soft systems methodology (SSM) to analyze the very complex situation, as the product returns present, provided the conceptual framework for empirical research. The principles and best practices of SSM were followed and an analysis of documents together with the theoretical knowledge of feedback, product returns and knowledge management served as the basis for the action research.

The research highlighted the importance of knowledge management (even in a rather simple form) for the solution of the problematic situation and underlined the necessary interconnections between different areas of business processes management and the need to manage knowledge. It also showed that product returns act as important feedback for the whole organization.

This paper is the first attempt to apply current knowledge of the feedback construct into the knowledge and product returns management. It is also the first attempt to apply SSM to product returns management.

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of culture on consumers’ perception of brands, specifically brand identity in Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar), and how brands entering new markets, launching new products or modifying existing brands can gain important insights from this to make the brand culturally acceptable.

This study includes both inductive and deductive approaches. The literature review has been conducted to identity the factors of brand identity and culture, followed by the blending of the factors through Delphi method. The relationship that was identified through qualitative approach was further tested through a quantitative survey (n=1,152). The analysis includes, hypotheses testing using the Kruskal–Wallis test.

The results of hypothesis testing proved that culture does play a significant role in shaping how consumers perceive brand identity. The Kruskal–Wallis test showed a significant difference across three cultures. Only two constructs that were not ranked significantly different across three cultures were brand as a stance and brand through place and time. Findings of this study supported the culture-specific branding, i.e. Islamic branding in the studied context.

Brand identity can be said to be the focal point of all branding activities. Brand identity creation starts with the starting of the product or services and is passed on through the process of brand communication and is manifested through the brand image formation by customer. Once the brand identity for a brand is created, it is very tough to change it; hence, from the very beginning, marketers have to take care of the brand identity. Thus, the findings of this study can be used by brand managers and marketers to create or modify brand identity according to the culture of the target consumers. These findings could also be incorporated for designing Islamic branding strategy for the studied context.

This research uses both qualitative and quantitative approaches to identify the brand identity and culture variables and subsequently probes the relationship among them. This study would help the brand managers in designing the brand identity for the brand operating or planning to enter in the Gulf countries.

This study aims to examine whether companies’ donations to political parties can impact product experience, specifically taste.

Research design consists of four studies; three online, one in person. Participants were shown a cookie (Studies 1-3) or cereal (Study 4) and told that the producing company donated to either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party (Studies 1-3) or an unspecified party (Study 4).

Participants rated food products as less tasty if told they came from a company that donated to a party they object to. These effects were shown to be mediated by moral disgust (Study 3). Effects were restricted to taste and willingness to buy (Study 4), with no effects on other positive product dimensions.

The studies provide a first piece of evidence that political donations by companies can negatively impact product experience. This can translate to purchase decisions through an emotional, rather than calculated, route.

Companies should be careful about making donations some of their consumers may find objectionable. This might impact both purchase and consumption decisions, as well as post-consumption word-of-mouth.

Companies’ political involvement can negatively impact subjective product experience, even though such information has no bearing on product quality. The current findings demonstrate that alterations in subjective product quality may underlie alterations in consumer decision-making because of ideologically tinged information, and reveals moral disgust as the mechanism underlying these effects. In this, it provides a first demonstration that even mild ideological information that is not globally bad or inherently immoral can generate moral disgust, and that such effects depend on consumers’ own attitudes.