Why Do Consumers Like Products From Rival Countries?

In order to understand the popularity of products among consumers from a foreign rival country, this thesis investigates the effect of animosity on consumers’ purchasing attitude on foreign products from a new perspective, taking into consideration three country-related factors and the interaction effects between them. The three exogenous variables are perception of country of origin (COO), consumer ethnocentrism (CET) and animosity. Based on the literatures on Country of Origin Effect, on Consumer Ethnocentrism and CETSCALE (Shimp and Sharma,1987), and on Animosity Model (Klein et al.,1998), questionnaires were carefully designed, and data were collected through a well-conducted survey in China. SPSS and Structural equation modeling (Amos) were then employed to analyze the data.The major accomplishments of this thesis are three-fold:firstly, it demonstrates the negative effect of animosity and positive effects of country of origin perception and consumer ethnocentrism on consumers’willingness to buy; secondly, by studying the interactions among animosity, consumer ethnocentrism, and country of origin perception, we find the negative correlation between animosity and consumer ethnocentrism and the positive correlation between consumer ethnocentrism and country of origin perception; furthermore, the results of a multi-group analysis reveal that keep all the other factors constant, stronger country of origin perception decrease the impact from the animosity on the purchase attitude and the significant moderating effect of country of origin perception is verified.