Brand foreignness and anger decrease purchase intentions of ethnocentric consumers for national icon products

The marketing literature lacks a thorough understanding of how emotions change ethnocentric consumers’ brand quality perceptions and purchase intentions when there are two different nationality signals about the product evaluated (i.e., product nationality signal vs brand nationality signal). To address this gap, we conducted an empirical study (mixed-design ANOVA) with ethnocentric consumers to test whether anger and sadness change purchasing intentions and perceptions of brand quality for fictitious brands across two different product types (national icon product vs non-national icon product). The regression analysis indicates that when ethnocentric consumers are induced to feel anger, their purchase intentions for national icon products decrease significantly when the product has a foreign brand image. Because incidental anger (i.e., the feeling of anger carried over from a situation unrelated to the decision at hand) triggers stereotypical reasoning, angry ethnocentric consumers seem to focus on the nationality image of the brand rather than the nationality image of the product class (i.e., national icon products signaling a nation’s heritage). Our study displays the powerful impact of incidental emotions on ethnocentric consumers’ judgment and decision-making for brands with foreign vs domestic images.