Favoritism Toward Foreign and Domestic Brands: A Comparison of Different Theoretical Explanations

Five theoretical approaches can predict favoritism toward domestic and foreign brands. This article applies a contrastive perspective to examine social identity, personal identity, cultural identity, system justification, and categorical cognition theories and their attendant constructs. The authors propose a set of main-effects hypotheses as well as hypotheses related to both product and country moderation effects on attitudes toward and loyalty to domestic and foreign brands. They test the hypotheses on a sample of Chinese consumers with respect to salient brands from 12 product categories. The results indicate that three of the theoretical approaches examined can explain only one side of favoritism—most commonly favoritism toward domestic brands—but not favoritism toward both domestic and foreign brands. Consumer xenocentrism, a concept rooted in system justification theory, seems to provide more consistent predictions for both domestic- and foreign-brand bias

A comparison of formative versus reflective approaches for the measurement of electronic service quality

Drawing upon the extant literature, we examine the definition, conceptualization, and measurement of electronic service quality (e-SQ) and propose an alternative measurement approach. We posit that customers' perceptions of overall e-SQ are influenced by six proximal antecedents: security/privacy, fulfillment/reliability, website design, customer service, informativeness, and customization. Using three independent samples of real customers of three hotel reservation sites, we assess the proposed measurement approach via appropriate scale development procedures. Findings indicate that a causal structure that considers e-SQ as a distinct construct that is influenced by six proximal antecedents should be preferred over a second-order reflective measurement model. We discuss theoretical implications of our proposed measurement method, make recommendations for service firms, and offer directions for future research

The internationalization of services: trends, obstacles and issues

The international market for services grew to $1.2 trillion in 1995 and has been growing at double‐digit rates. The USA possesses the lion’s share of the world’s services exports and stands to gain significantly from lower barriers to trade in services. However, despite the significant progress already made, numerous barriers remain and many countries have not joined the multilateral negotiations for eliminating or lowering existing barriers. This study examines the history of market access and trends, the obstacles to the international marketing of services, and key issues including classification methods and economic, regulatory, and cultural impediments, and offers directions for future research.</jats:p

Exporting and the Internet: a conceptual perspective

This study explores the suitability and the potential use of the Internet in exporting. Six fundamental axioms that govern the Internet‐export business dyad are identified and antecedents to the relevance of the Internet in exporting are explored. The axioms address the difficulty of acquiring a sustainable competitive advantage via the Internet, the necessity for export‐specific structures, the “derived” nature of consumer demand, security concerns, the presence of structural impediments in using the Internet, and the transaction‐ versus process‐based use of the Internet in exporting. In particular, the use and penetration of the Internet are significantly influenced by the presence of key structural impediments of various nations, which are fully explored in this study. In these contexts, applications of the Internet in exporting are examined in light of exporter type, application type, and transaction type. Using this information, a conceptual framework that defines the role of the Internet in exporting is offered. According to the framework, the appropriateness and the extent to which an exporter may successfully use the Internet should be assessed in light of its net incremental contribution to export profits.</jats:p