The impact of consumers' expressions of national identity on global and local brand perceptions

Current research on country of origin treats global and local brands as a single construct based on opposite ends of one continuum - a brand is either a global brand or a local brand. This thesis shows that the global-local brand concept should be divided into two distinct constructs – brand globalness based on distribution of the brand (global and nonglobal) and brand ownership based on ownership of the brand (local-owned and foreign-owned). Additionally, the role of consumer ethnocentrism, patriotism, global openness and the effects of price differences on brand evaluations and purchase intentions can now be examined more closely. Two stages of Quasi-experiment were administered in Thailand. Study one was conducted with 243 undergraduate students to examine direct and interaction effects of brand globalness and brand ownership as well as moderating impacts of consumer ethnocentrism, patriotism, and global openness on consumers’ attitudes and intentions towards the brand. Results suggest that, regardless of brand ownership, consumers evaluated global brands more positively than non-global brands. Consumers rated certain local-owned brands (airline) more positively than foreign-owned brands, regardless of the brand’s level of globalness. This research also found that high patriotic and high ethnocentric consumers favoured local-owned brands and high global openness consumers favoured global brands.Study two was conducted with 558 postgraduate students to examine impacts of consumer ethnocentrism, and patriotism and the possible interaction with price, on purchase intention. This was done to determine if ethnocentric/patriotic consumers were willing to pay more for local-owned brands and if so, to what extent. Findings indicated that perceived price differences moderated the brand ownership-purchase intention relationship. More importantly, when the price of a local-owned brand increased relative to a foreign-owned brand, a negative intention to purchase the local-owned brand was diminished among high ethnocentric and patriotic consumers. Also, when the price of a foreign-owned brand increased relative to a local-owned brand, a negative intention to purchase the foreign-owned brand was enhanced among high ethnocentric and patriotic consumers. Managerial implications discussed in this study included benefits from the use of a new brand categorisation scheme and price difference in brand positioning and pricing strategies