Historic Problem or Ongoing Crisis? An Exploratory Study of Causes and Consequences of Consumer Animosity in China

This paper aims to test the consumer animosities against Japanese, American, French products amongst Urban Adult Chinese Consumers (UACC), explore causes and consequences of consumer animosity and examine the moderating effects of locations, gender, age groups and education levels. It discovered that there was strong consumer animosity towards the Japanese, however, animosity directed at Americans and the French were relative low. There are a wide range of causes of animosity, apart from previous identified factors such as Nanjing Massacre and economic concerns, this study discovered a wide range of sources including school education, media influence, Japan’s close relationship to United States and attempts to curtail China’s influence, concerns for further military clashes, Japanese government attitude towards war past, perceived consumer discrimination by Japanese companies, peer pressure etc. all contributed to UACC’s animosity towards the Japanese. The impacts of animosity on willingness to buy have 3 distinct patterns: boycott, avoid and only avoid Japanese products if better alternatives are available. Japanese animosity is stronger in Northern China. Gender and education levels have no significant moderating effects. Older generations appear to harbour stronger Japanese animosity

What If They Don’t Like You? An Investigation of Consumer Animosity amongst Urban Adult Chinese Consumers

This paper aims to investigate urban adult Chinese consumers (UACC)’s animosity towards the Japanese, Americans and French. It adopted a mixed methods approach that consists of street surveys and semi-structured interviews conducted in Northern and Southern China. It discovered that consumer animosity towards the Americans and French were relatively low and there was strong animosity towards the Japanese. It discovered a wide range of sources including school education, media influence, Japan’s close relationship to United States, concerns for further military clashes, Japanese government attitude towards war past, perceived consumer discrimination by Japanese companies, peer pressure etc. all contributed to UACC’s animosity towards the Japanese. Depending on the levels of animosity, some UACC could choose to boycott or avoid purchasing Japanese products

ANIMOSITY’S EFFECTS ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOR: A STUDY OF FINNISH CONSUMER ANIMOSITY TOWARDS RUSSIA

The goals of this thesis for the literature review’s part are to 1) Explain what consumer animosity is 2) Study the most common sources of consumer animosity 3) Clarify how consumer animosity functions under different circumstances 4) Examine consumer animosity’s effects on consumer behavior 5) Offer practical implications in managing consumer animosity from managerial and governmental standpoints. The empirical study was conducted as an online survey, to which 149 Finnish consumers participated. The empirical goals of the this thesis are to 1) Find out to what degree Finnish consumers feel animosity towards Russia 2) Study how animosity towards Russia in Finnish consumers affects their consumer behavior towards Russian goods, and tourism to Russia 3) Examine sources behind the Finnish consumer animosity towards Russia 4) Research whether demographic factors have an impact on Finnish consumers’ animosity towards Russia. The results support previous consumer animosity literature in consumer animosity lowering willingness to buy from the animosity country. The results also show that consumer animosity, and people animosity in particular, decreases willingness to visit the animosity country as a tourist. The findings also give strong support for consumer animosity decreasing product quality judgments concerning products originating from the animosity country. It was found out that age is significantly and positively correlated with Finnish consumers’ animosity towards Russia. Also consumers living in the capital expressed more animosity than those living outside the capital. Gender had no effect on the level of consumer animosity towards Russia in Finnish consumers. The most commonly expressed reasons for consumer animosity towards Russia were war related, and politics related. Lastly, it was found out that despite previous war history between Finland and Russia, Finnish consumers see Russia’s more recent actions as harder to forgive. Also managerial implications based on the results are presented.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Afinity, Animosity and Organizational Design

The behavior of the members of an organization is determined, not only by the objective situation facing them, but also by their attitudes. Thus, the objective of aligning collective goals and individual behavior translates into a problem of alignment of attitudes. An important dimension of the problem of organizational design is, therefore, to choose the organization that best contributes to the alignment of attitudes. This paper shows that the existence of animosity, as opposed to afinity, affects the optimal organizational design.

Extending the animosity model in times of the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-national validation of the health animosity scale

The concept of consumer animosity encompasses factors that influence consumers’ negative attitudes and feelings toward other countries, which decrease consumers' buying behavior concerning foreign products. However, the impact of health concerns has been widely neglected in the literature on consumer animosity. To fill this void, this paper extends the established animosity models by introducing the new concept of health animosity and by developing a health animosity scale. The paper empirically validates the new scale in a multi-national study in the U.S., Germany, Brazil, and India. The scale measures the respondents’ health animosity toward China, as many consumers worldwide blame China for the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic and criticize the government’s misbehavior during the outbreak. The analyses confirm suitable convergent and discriminant validity of the newly developed scale for most of the countries. The paper extends the understanding on consumer animosity, as not only incidents due to single nations' concrete purposes (e.g., military, economic or political actions) but also natural catastrophes and the reactions of single nations can cause feelings of animosity. The research implications outline directions for future studies, which could investigate the consequences of health animosity

CONSUMERS’ WILLINGNESS TO BUY FOREIGN PRODUCTS: EFFECTS OF CONSUMER ANIMOSITY AND ETHNOCENTRISM

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of animosity on consumer’s willingness to buy foreign products. Animosity can be a vital force to decide whether to buy a foreign product or not.  This research paper is about measuring and quantifying the animosity of people of china towards Japanese products in general. Additionally, it is quite evident from previous researches, that people of china have a special grudge against Japanese, after world war II. Previous studies in this regard were conducted in one or few cities of china, this research aimed to collect data from multiple cities, in order to generalize the concept.  To discuss in detail, whether people from different parts of china consider this animosity against Japanese products or not. In addition, this study also highlighted a new construct i.e. perceived quality. What will happen if a Chinese consumer have to decide between animosity and better quality of Japanese product?  To conduct this investigation, the study is undertaken in China where the Chinese consumers’ animosity towards the Japanese was examined. The data with a usable sample size of 435 were collected in the Chinese city of Nanjing.  Findings of the study revealed that, people in china still have high level of animosity towards Japanese products. And even at times, products with high quality are being ignored because of its Japanese background. Most important and consistent to current literature, results showed that, consumer animosity as a higher order construct which is indicated by economic animosity and war animosity.  Those parts of china where we found an extreme animosity, ethnocentrism couldn’t play a significant role to affect the other constructs in the animosity model. Animosity can be a result of any event or mishap, but will it stay the same after so many years? irrespective of the quality of product, this is what, this paper tends to highlight.Â

The animosity transfer process:Consumer denigration of foreign sponsors and testing potential mitigation strategies

Purpose: sponsorships involving foreign brands are ubiquitous, but those involving a company from an animosity-evoking country can adversely affect rather than enhance domestic consumers’ attitude towards the brand. This paper explains the mechanisms by which brand denigration occurs, introducing and validating a model of the animosity transfer process as well as considering if various framing and timing strategies attenuate or lead to adverse consumer responses.Design/methodology/approach: study 1 tests the animosity transfer model, utilizing a scenario in which English consumers respond to a German brand sponsoring the England soccer team. Study 2 assesses the generalizability of the model in the context of Indian consumers’ responses to sponsorship of their cricket team by a Chinese company, and the extent to which an honest framing of the sponsorship choice through the announcement affects outcomes. Study 3 returns to an England-Germany country dyad, testing whether priming consumers with information about the sponsorship prior to a full announcement, attenuates or intensifies the impact of animosity on the studied outcomes. Findings : the three studies demonstrate that when consumers learn of a sponsorship, it triggers an evaluation process in which the agonistic emotion (anger) they feel plays a pivotal role. More intense emotional appraisals weaken perceptions of sponsor-sponsee congruence, which together act as consecutive process variables mediating the relationship between animosity and sponsorship outcomes. Framing the sponsorship announcement with an honest justification for the partnership can improve outcomes but not amongst those with the highest animosity. Providing consumers with an advanced warning (preannouncement) of the sponsorship also amplifies consumers’ unfavorable evaluations showcasing how difficult animosity is to manage in this context.Originality/value: the animosity transfer model aids understanding of the mechanisms by which animosity affects brand attitude for foreign (out-group) sponsors. It identifies how animosity generates agonistic emotions and in turn weakens perceived fit between the sponsor and sponsee, leading to adverse consumer responses.<br/

CONSUMER ANIMOSITY: DOES IT EXIST IN AFRICA?

Globalization has been hailed by some as the panacea of world’s economic, social and political problems. However, the same has had its own challenges and has come to be a topic of major study. One area that has generated interest is the effects of globalization on marketing and specifically consumer behavior. In different parts of the world, consumers have responded differently to products from different countries based on their perceptions about the country of origin. One of the highly debated aspect of consumer behaviour is consumer animosity. Consumer animosity is defined as an individuals’ negative feelings and attitudes toward a specific foreign country that are often developed by various triggers, such as traumatic historical events, economic disputes or even as a result of basic differences in cultural norms and values. This paper addresses consumer animosity and focuses of whether African consumers have animosity tendencies towards products from other countries. It forms a basis for preparation of an empirical study to validate the consumer animosity construct among African consumers and contribute to the ongoing debate of animosity highly studied in USA, Asia and Europe but little in Africa.

Examining the role of hybrid products in a consumer animosity setting

This paper aims to examine the effects of animosity on consumers? willingness to buy hybrid products (i.e. products that involve affiliations of two or more countries - such as branded in Japan but made in China). By examining the Chinese consumers? animosity towards the Japanese, the study?s findings revealed a high level of animosity present that resulted in the Chinese consumers? unwillingness to buy Japanese products. More importantly, results showed that the Chinese consumers are not any more receptive to hybrid products as such domestic affiliations have not diluted the animosity