The Effect Of Brand Origin Misidentification And Correction Means On New Brand’s Trust And Affect

In recent years, Chinese consumer confidence steadily surpasses Americans’and the global average. More and more multinational companies are bringing their brands to China market, which provides more brand choices to local consumers. Chinese consumers prefer foreign brands but the ability to correctly identify the brand origin is limited. The research on which conditions could cause more brand origin confusion may show implement direction to those local companies who would like to achieve benefits by using the brand origin confusion strategy. On the other hand, the confusion strategy may lose effectiveness gradually with the rising brand popularity. It’s a worthwhile issue to investigate whether an active correction by the brand owner on consumers’brand origin misidentification or a passive treatment which lets consumers make aware of the misidentification by themselves would lead to different levels of brand evaluation. The information correction on brand origin misidentification is a white space in the current brand origin identification literatures.Based on the competence and warmth dimensions of the stereotype content model, the research applied a2×2experiment design with2brand types and2information correction types. The research executed the experiment by group with experiment materials of dummy local new brands, characterized with being high on competence and warmth respectively and2different types of information correction on brand origin misidentification (active vs. passive), which aimed to compare consumers’brand trust and affect before and after correction. Furthermore, the research examined the negative effect of brand origin confusion strategy by comparing brand evaluation after correction with the control samples who correctly identified the experimental brand.Most of the hypotheses were supported in the research. In the current China market situation, local consumers think China’s country stereotype is high-warmth and low-competence. After controlling several factors influencing the accuracy of brand origin identification, the results proved that local new brands of high-competence are more likely to be misidentified as foreign brands by local consumers compared with brands of high-warmth. Meanwhile, local consumers show higher level of brand trust toward local new brands of high-competence. The results also indicated that in most cases after knowing the correct brand origin, except actively correcting the misidentification of brands of high-competence, those consumers who mistakenly identify the brand origin will display significantly lower level of brand trust and affect than before correction but no diagnostic difference compared with the control samples. Of all the cases, local new brands of high-competence under active correction have the strongest immunological ability when being corrected on brand origin identification. The research enriches the literatures of brand origin identification by focusing on brand origin misidentification and correction with the integration of stereotype content model in the sociology research area. It also reveals that local new brands of high-competence can cause more brand origin confusion by local consumers. It is recommended that local new brands of high-competence should make active correction on brand origin misidentification at the right time and overall, local manufacturers should not blindly adapt brand origin confusion strategy. With regard to China’s country stereotype in the future, several outstanding local brands of high-competence can help optimize the competence dimension of China’s country stereotype.