Cultural Psychology

A Special Issue of the journal of Consumer Psychology

Durairaj Maheswaran, Sharon Shavitt, Durairaj Maheswaran, Sharon Shavitt

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135065249
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Konsumverhalten

First published in 2000. This is Volume 9, No 2 of the Journal of Consumer Psychology. Although there is growing interest in cultural differences in consumer behavior, focused and systematic consumer research on the topic is still in its infancy. The contributors to this special issue address the conceptual and methodological issues that are central to conducting cross-cultural research, including selecting or blending emic and etic research approaches, achieving measurement equivalence, expanding the cultural constructs and geographical regions under investigation, and understanding mediating processes. In the process, they review the progress that has been made in addressing these issues in consumer psychology and suggest a number of priorities for future research in this important domain.

Effects of Brand Local and Nonlocal Origin on Consumer Attitudes in Developing Countries

Rajeev Batra

School of Business Administration

University of Michigan

Venkatram Ramaswamy

School of Business Administration

University of Michigan

Dana L. Alden

College of Business Administration

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Jan-Benedict E. M. Steenkamp

Department of Marketing

Tilburg University, The Netherlands

S. Ramachander

Academy for Management Excellence

Madras, India

This study tested whether, among consumers in developing countries, brands perceived as having a nonlocal country of origin, especially from the West, are attitudinally preferred to brands seen as local, for reasons not only of perceived quality but also of social status. We found that this perceived brand nonlocalness effect was greater for consumers who have a greater admiration for lifestyles in economically developed countries, which is consistent with findings from the cultural anthropology literature. The effect was also found to be stronger for consumers who were high in susceptibility to normative influence and for product categories high in social signaling value. This effect was also moderated by product category familiarity, but not by consumer ethnocentrism. The results, thus, suggest that in developing countries, a brand’s country of origin not only serves as a “quality halo” or summary of product quality (cf. Han, 1989), but also possesses a dimension of nonlocalness that, among some consumers and for some product categories, contributes to attitudinal liking for status-enhancing reasons.

Consumers in developing markets are increasingly faced with a choice between older local brands and newer nonlocal or foreign brands. How they make this choice is obviously worth researching. Scores of studies have already documented the ways in which consumers use a brand’s country of origin (CO) as a cue in inferring its quality and acceptability (Baughn & Yaprak, 1993; Bilkey & Nes, 1982), and this research ought to help us understand how consumers in developing countries make this choice between local and nonlocal brands. However, most analyses of CO effects have only used data from U.S. or U.K. consumers (see review in Heslop & Papadopoulos, 1993). As a result, we are left with little theory to predict how and why consumers in developing markets choose between older, local brands and newer, foreign or nonlocal brands. To enhance our understanding of such processes in developing versus developed country settings, the following study tested several hypotheses regarding the psychological mechanisms that underlie how a brand’s origin, whether local or nonlocal, affects brand preference and choice in India, one of the world’s fastest growing consumer markets.

Academic research on CO effects is now over 30 years old. Much of the initial research in this area sought to understand risk-reducing biases used by Western consumers when evaluating products from, among others, less-developed and, therefore, “risky” countries or regions. Schooler and Sunoo (1969), for example, studied biases among U.S. consumers against countries in Asia or Africa. Given this orientation, the CO literature has typically examined the role of the CO as a “halo” construct that influences product attribute quality beliefs, or as a construct that summarizes beliefs about product quality, and only then influences attitudes or purchase intentions (Han, 1989; Heslop & Papadopoulos, 1993). Only recently has the literature begun to examine nonquality-related, direct effects of a brand’s CO on brand attitudes or purchase intentions. For example, Klein, Ettenson, and Morris (1998) found among Chinese consumers an effect for country-specific animosity that reduces brand purchases from Japan, independent of judgments about the quality of those brands.

In this study, we hypothesized that CO effects in developing countries operate differently than suggested in the literature, which is largely based on developed country data. Specifically, we argue that, in developing countries, a brand’s CO affects perceptions of nonlocalness. Such nonlocalness can be very favorable, especially if the CO has a Western or developed CO (e.g., the United States, Europe, or Japan). We believe that the nonlocal effect operates in addition to consumer assessments of the brand’s quality ratings and is motivated primarily for the purpose of status enhancement. We also examined the extent to which the impact of a nonlocal CO is moderated by a consumer’s admiration of the lifestyles in economically developed countries (EDCs). In addition, we studied other moderating factors, such as consumer ethnocentrism and familiarity with the product category. Our study covered a wide range of product categories, brands, and models and used consumer perceptions of a brand’s localness and product quality, rather than relying only on researcher impressions.

LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES

Reviews of the scores of articles that have appeared on the topic of CO effects can be found in Bilkey and Nes (1982), Baughn and Yaprak (1993), and others. In brief, a brand’s CO serves as an extrinsic cue (along with price and brand name) that supplements the use of intrinsic cues (perceptions of design, performance, etc.). Economic, cultural, and political perceptions of the CO in question determine its effect on brand evaluation (Han, 1989). Research on the CO (e.g., Parameswaran & Pisharodi, 1994) has shown that CO image has multiple dimensions or facets (such as the strength of its economy, nature of its political system, technological competence, etc.). Nonetheless, previously studied CO effects primarily concerned its effect on a brand’s presumed levels of intrinsic quality and performance and, therefore, its desirability (Bilkey & Nes, 1982; Han, 1989). These effects of the CO have been found to vary across product classes and consumer types and tend to be smaller when other cues are available to the consumer (Papadopoulos, 1993).

Evidence of Generalized Preferences for Nonlocal Brands in Developing Countries

Another stream of the literature that is more anthropological in nature, however, suggests that consumers in developing countries also see the CO as determining a brand’s desirability for symbolic, status-enhancing reasons (status preference), in addition to suggesting overall quality. Such generalized status preference for nonlocal (foreign) brands has been reported in developing countries, such as The People’s Republic of China (Sklair, 1994), Vietnam (Schultz, Pecotich, & Le, 1994), Nigeria (Arnould, 1989), the Democratic Republic of Congo (Friedman, 1990), Zimbabwe (Burke, 1996), Romania and Turkey (Bar-Haim, 1987; Ger, Belk, & Lascu, 1993), and Ethiopia and Peru (Belk, 1988, p. 117).

In discussing Romania, Ger et al. (1993) noted that

Status goods are nearly inevitably foreign. This was true before the revolution, but then scarcity made such goods very hard to acquire. Now it is more a matter of their greater cost, plus their continued association with foreign lifestyles, that imparts status to their owners, (p. 104)

Concerning Turkey, they continued, “Consumption of foreign products is highly desirable … The synonymity of progress with ever-present Westernization whets the appetite for the now-available foreign products … status brands are mostly foreign” (p. 105). Sklair (1994) wrote of Chinese consumers that “everything foreign had an automatic cachet” (p. 269). Of Vietnam, Schultz et al. (1994) reported “western brand favoritism … supplants local products” (p. 248). Finally, Burke (1996) wrote of Zimbabwe that “foreign items (had) an association … with elite power and privilege” (p. 181).

Despite the strength of this research finding in the cultural anthropology literature, this status preference for foreign (especially Western) goods among consumers in developing countries appears to have been largely ignored in the standard CO literature. Hence, additional research on its existence, as well as its antecedents and consequences, is clearly needed. Neglect of this effect in the CO literature could be because this effect seems likely to be much stronger in developing than developed countries, where most of the CO research has originated.

Why This Effect Is Stronger in Developing Countries

All societies have processes of social comparison, ways of negotiating status and prestige, and markers of class. Researchers agree that the products and brands chosen by consumers often serve nonutilitarian functions, such as symbolic acquisition and communication of social distinctions, particularly status (Douglas & Isherwood, 1979). Such concern with status display is even more important in developing countries, where interpersonal relationships are of prime importance (Ger et al., 1993, p. 105) and where, because of economic transition, income disparities and status mobility are high (Belk, 1988, p. 112; Kottak, 1990, pp. 49, 58). Indeed, times of transition and social mobility magnify the tendency to claim differential status through the brands one consumes (Luckmann & Berger, 1964). Development economists, such as James (1993), argued that periods of economic development increase the importance of positional values, oriented toward conspicuous consumption and status display.

Given this greater salience of status markers in developing societies, several explanations for nonlocal products acquiring higher status than local products come to mind. First, in developing countries, imports are usually more expensive and more scarce than local products, making them more desirable from a reference group standpoint (Bearden & Etzel, 1982). Writing of the Congo, Friedman (1990) said,

For the Congolese, identity is very much outside of … the society. To realize oneself is to become “un grand,” and the latter is manifested in its highest form in the best of the West, the most modern and latest design and the least accessible [italics added] … The practice of identity here is the accumulation of otherness, (p. 324)

Second, consumers in developing countries are relatively less affluent than those in developed countries, and this can, quite naturally, create a sense of insecurity and inferiority (e.g., on the inferiority complex of Brazilians, see Kottak, 1990, p. 38; and for comments about Indians, see Singh, 1982, p. 23). Consumers in developing countries, thus, often seek to emulate the apparently glamorous Western consumption practices and lifestyles and purchase the brands they are exposed to through movies and TV channels, Western tourists, their own workers gone overseas, and their own travel abroad. Because the production and control of popular culture resides in the affluent core countries of the West (especially the United States), the flow of media images is mostly from the economic center (the West) to the periphery (the developing world), making brands that symbolize affluent Western lifestyles seem highly desirable. Appadurai (1990, p. 299) identified different dimensions of this global cultural flow, including “mediascapes” (“large and complex repertoires of images, narratives and ‘ethnoscapes’ to viewers throughout the world, in which the world of commodities and the world of ‘news’ and politics are profoundly mixed”); Ger and Belk (1996) added “consumptionscapes” to his list. Belk (1988) wrote, “Besides the brands themselves, the consumer desire for these brands is one of the developed worlds’ chief exports” (p. 117). This process has been labeled by some as a noncoercive ...