The Role of Animosity on Purchasing Foreign-made Products: Evidence in the relationship between Vietnam and China

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to contribute to the development of animosity theory by exploring sources of consumer animosity that can stimulate feeling of animosity toward target country. Also investigate the relationships among consumer animosity, consumer ethnocentrism, cultural acceptability, product judgment, reluctance to buy foreign product and product ownership in developing context – Viet Nam. Exploratory and empirical research is carried out in a developing country in order to explore the sources of animosity and to test the factor structure and the hypotheses through exploratory, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model. We find that there are four sources compose of animosity in Viet Nam context named war experience, economic impact, territory conflict and health issue. The research extends the domain of the animosity construct to a four-dimensional structure rather than the two-dimensional structure used in most previous studies. It is the first study to empirically test an extended animosity model and investigate role of consumer animosity, cultural acceptability and consumer ethnocentrism on product judgment and reluctance to buy foreign product in developing context. Furthermore, the results of this research support for original previous research (Klein et al., 1998) in terms of the relationship between consumer animosity and ethnocentrism toward reluctance to buy foreign product. However, the interesting result is that there is significant relationship between consumer animosity and product judgment, which did not support in original research. Also cultural acceptability plays a role in reduce consumer ethnocentrism and improve product judgment. In addition, consumer animosity has a positive impact on ethnocentrism which reinforces consumers’ patriot in order to stimulate reluctance to buy foreign product made in target country. In summary, the present study provides theoretical and empirical insights into direct and indirect effects of consumer animosity on purchase intentions, which may be beneficial for both local and international manager who suffer from the boycott of foreign merchandise.