The Effects of Perceived Brand Globalness and Perceived Brand Localness in China: Empirical Evidence on Western, Asian, and Domestic Retailers

Abstract

Internationalizing retailers have shifted their attention to developing countries in which they pursue different forms of adapted-format transfer strategies to succeed locally. However, little is known about whether such retailers can use their core advantage of a global retail brand and how consumer perceptions of such global retail brands drive retail patronage. To expand knowledge on this issue, the authors use data from 1188 Chinese consumer surveys on 36 Western, Asian, and mainland Chinese retailers. They find that retailers' perceived brand globalness and perceived brand localness enhance retail patronage only by affecting consumers' functional and psychological values. These value creation routes to success change according to retailers' origins. Although Western and Asian retailers draw equally strong benefits from their global perceptions, Asian retailers convince consumers predominantly through functional values,whereas Western retailers also influence consumers emotionally. Chinese retailers gain consumers by being perceived as "glocal" brands. Furthermore, perceived brand globalness enhances retail patronage most strongly for global identity consumers. Thus, retailers in emerging countries benefit from perceived brand globalness depending on retailer-and consumer-specific boundary conditions.

Brand evaluation, satisfaction and trust as predictors of brand loyalty: the mediator-moderator effect of brand relationships

“…Consumers assess the brands in their minds and they evaluate them using the general attributes of these brands, various tangible and intangible cues related to the brand as a product and the brand as a person (Gilbert and Hewlett, 2003;Swoboda et al, 2012;Puzakova et al, 2013a;Puzakova et al, 2013b). Although the assessment of a brand can be based on a number of different attributes that are somewhat tailored to the specific assessed brand, in most research projects, a given sub-set of these attributes is use as a basis to assess brands (Gilbert and Hewlett, 2003).…”

Inconsistencies in the behavioural effects of consumer ethnocentrism

“…Ethnocentric consumers tend to prefer global brands less because such brands are less accessible to and incongruent with their local identities (Swoboda et al, 2012;Zhang and Khare, 2009). Thus, because global brands are more likely to be perceived as greater economic and cultural threats to a home country and are less congruent with the identities of ethnocentric consumers, they are more likely to receive higher levels of ethnocentric bias.…”

The interplay between country stereotypes and perceived brand globalness/localness as drivers of brand preference

“…By juxtaposing global branding and COO literature, it tries to (a) establish whether brand globalness/ localness and country stereotypes are both relevant in predicting brand preference, (b) identify which of the two is more influential in the presence of the other, and (c) explore whether there is an interaction between the perceived globalness/localness of the brand and the stereotype associated with the brand origin. To this end, the study develops a conceptual model incorporating variables capturing the global/local nature of a brand -namely, perceived brand globalness (PBG) (Steenkamp et al, 2003) and perceived brand localness (PBL) (Swoboda, Pennemann, & Taube, 2012) -and juxtaposes them with stereotypical beliefs about the brand's origin captured by the dimensions of competence and warmth of the stereotype content model (SCM) (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). The proposed model is empirically tested using several well-known brands from different countries and product categories.…”