ME-WE-THEM. A context-sensitive model of social and vicarious consumer animosity
Funding Institution
ANR
Project Team
Prof. Dr. Robert Mai (Department of Marketing, Grenoble Ecole de Management), Prof. Dr. Oliver Trendel (Department of Marketing, Grenoble Ecole de Management), Prof. Dr. Stefan Hoffmann (Department of Marketing, CAU Kiel), Dr. Wassili Lasarov (CAU Kiel), Ipek Nibat (Grenoble Ecole de Management), Tinka Krüger (CAU Kiel)
Duration
2019 – 2022
Short Description
Consumer animosity can be understood as “the remnants of antipathy related to previous or ongoing military, political, or economic events” (Klein, Ettenson, and Morris, 1998). These feelings are known to make consumers reject products or services with a certain country of origin. Although it is a social phenomenon, the extant research on consumer animosity solely focuses on its individual determinants. This project studies consumer animosity in a social context to better understand the individual animosity decision and avoid harmful implications for society at large. The project aims to answer four research questions.
-First, it strives to understand how the level and the impact of the social animosity context varies cross-nationally.
- Second, it examines how the social animosity context interacts with the influence of the individual animosity drivers on consumption behavior (i.e., boycotting) and explores the role of descriptive norms (i.e., what is usually done by others).
- Third, it tests whether changes in the social animosity context are reflected in changes in individual consumption behaviors over time.
- And finally, it discovers the concept of vicarious animosity, such that how animosity feelings towards one target country might affect the relationship with closely related countries.
The project addresses these research questions with a series of experiments, implicit association tests, longitudinal studies, and a systematic review. Answering these research questions will help extend our knowledge on international marketing research and consumer behavior.
- Second, it examines how the social animosity context interacts with the influence of the individual animosity drivers on consumption behavior (i.e., boycotting) and explores the role of descriptive norms (i.e., what is usually done by others).
- Third, it tests whether changes in the social animosity context are reflected in changes in individual consumption behaviors over time.
- And finally, it discovers the concept of vicarious animosity, such that how animosity feelings towards one target country might affect the relationship with closely related countries.
The project addresses these research questions with a series of experiments, implicit association tests, longitudinal studies, and a systematic review. Answering these research questions will help extend our knowledge on international marketing research and consumer behavior.
Publications
Krüger, T., Lasarov, W., Nibat, I., Mai, R., Trendel, O., & Hoffmann, S. (2020). Extending the animosity model in times of the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-national validation of the health animosity scale. Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, MACAU.
Conference Presentations
Nibat, I., Krüger, T., Lasarov, W., Hoffmann, S., Mai, R., and Trendel, O. (2021, May). When authenticity does not matter: The indirect influence of news tagged as fake on the brand image. Paper presented at the EMAC 2021 Conference, Madrid, Spain.
Krüger, T., Lasarov, W., Nibat, I., Mai, R., Trendel, O., & Hoffmann, S. (2021, February). Extending the animosity model in times of the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-national validation of the health animosity scale. Paper presented at the AMA Winter Conference, St. Pete Beach, Florida, US.
Krüger, T., Nibat, I., Mai, R., Trendel, O., Lasarov, W., & Hoffmann, S. (2021, February). The era of fake news: How truthfulness and animosity interact. Paper presented at the AMA Winter Conference, St. Pete Beach, Florida, US.
References
Klein, J., Ettenson, R., & Morris, M. (1998). The Animosity Model of Foreign Product Purchase: An Empirical Test in the People’s Republic of China. Journal of Marketing, 62(1), 89-100. doi:10.2307/1251805