Amro A. Maher

The affective and cognitive components of country image : Perceptions of American products in Kuwait

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to utilize the BIAS map from the social psychology literature to operationalize and simultaneously examine the effects of the affective and cognitive components of country image.Design/methodology/approach – The researchers collected survey data using a snowball sample of undergraduates from a prominent university in Kuwait. The final sample consisted of 410 Kuwaitis who were 18 years or older; 52 percent of the respondents were female.Findings – The results of this study confirmed that affective country attitudes (i.e. contempt and admiration) relate to Kuwaitis’ willingness to buy American products. The results also support the conclusion that warmth and competence are positively related to admiration but negatively related to contempt.Research limitations/implications – Future research should identify situations in which the affective dimensions of country image play the more dominant role in consumer decision making. The model should also be tested across other c...

A sequential process of brand tribalism, brand pride and brand attitude to explain purchase intention: a cross-continent replication study

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore and replicate the indirect effect of smartphone brand tribalism on purchase intent via brand pride and brand attitude. Design/methodology/approach Using survey data from 190 US (Study 1) and 432 Qatari (Study 2) smartphone consumers, path analysis is used to evaluate the hypotheses. Findings For these disparate samples, only the defense of the tribal brand dimension of brand tribalism influences brand pride, which in turn leads to a sequential process of brand attitude and purchase intention. Research limitations/implications Using only smartphone data from the USA and Qatar may hinder external validity. As effect sizes in this context are understood, researchers have additional benchmarks for future brand tribalism and brand pride research. Practical implications The psychological underpinning and presence of brand tribes in society cannot be overlooked by strategists. Such tribal-laden following is too evident within smartphone communities. By further understanding the effect of brand tribalism on brand pride and subsequent attitudinal response and behavioral intent, marketers and brand leaders are in an improved position to develop strategies that appeal to targeted customers, ultimately growing and strengthening their brand value. Originality/value Supported by the anthropological view of brand tribalism, this paper contributes to the branding literature by examining the indirect effect of brand tribalism on purchase intention via brand pride and brand attitude. The posited model, previously untested and replicated here across two ethnically diverse samples, shows more explanatory power for defense of the tribal brand on brand pride as compared to the other brand tribalism dimensions. A novel and valid, multi-item brand pride measure is also developed.

The role of collective angst during and after a service failure

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the role of collective angst, the concern about the future viability of one’s group, during service failure and recovery. Design/methodology/approach – To test this objective the authors utilize an experiment to examine how Kuwaitis react to service failures when the front-line employee is a foreigner. Findings – The results indicate that collective angst is associated with greater anger following a service failure. The authors also find that collective angst moderates the impact of cultural distance on anger and recommendation intentions following a service-failure recovery attempt. More specifically, cultural distance leads to greater anger and lower intentions to recommend a service establishment for consumers that experience greater collective angst. Originality/value – The research provides the first attempt at examining how local consumers react to foreigner service providers, by examining how concern about the future vitality of one’s national group...

Modeling the Effects of an International Crisis on Brand Equity

ABSTRACT This research provides an analysis of the impact of an international crisis on brand equity. More specifically, the author tests a comprehensive model that examines the joint impact of animosity as well as the social pressure to avoid brands that originate from a controversial country. He explores the impact of what came to be known as the Mohammed controversy, which involved the Danish press publishing a series of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed on a Danish brand. Data were collected using a survey from 307 consumers in Kuwait. The findings show that animosity is not related to overall brand equity but is related to brand quality; moreover, subjective norms are negatively associated with overall brand equity. These results highlight the importance of subjective norms in influencing overall brand equity in times of international crises between nations.

The effect of the moral failure of a foreign brand on competing brands

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the moral failure of a scandalized foreign brand afflicted with a product-harm crisis on competing brands (i.e. within the same product category) while taking into account the country of origin (COO) of the brands. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents the results of two studies. The first study uses an experimental design, while the second uses a survey to examine a real-life product-harm crisis. Findings The results indicate that the moral failure of a scandalized foreign brand has an indirect negative effect on the intention to purchase competing foreign brands from the COO of the scandalized foreign brand. This effect is, however, reversed for domestic brands, where moral failure has an indirect positive effect on the intention to purchase competing domestic brands. Research limitations/implications The results of this research were based on an examination of how US consumers responded to the moral failure of Japanese and German brands. Future studies should examine brands from different COOs in different countries. Practical implications These results suggest that competing foreign brands from the COO of the scandalized brand should collaborate to quickly handle a product-harm crisis to prevent a spillover and that domestic competitors should capitalize on the opportunity to attract new customers. Originality/value This study represents a first attempt to examine the effect of a foreign brand’s moral failure in handling product-harm crisis on competing brands, both foreign and domestic.

Examining the Longitudinal Effects of an International Crises

There is ample research on how consumers respond to controversial events that occur at the international level. However, there is a dearth of literature examining the longitudinal effects of such controversial events. This research attempts to fill such gap. We examine the longitudinal effects of animosity, positive anticipated emotions, negative anticipated emotions and subjective norms on the willingness to buy products from a country that is perceived as a transgressor. More specifically we study the longitudinal effects of such variables in Kuwait in response to the controversy that involved publishing cartoon that depicted the prophet Mohammed. We find that in period 1 the subjective norms attached to avoiding Danish products, animosity and the negative emotions anticipated from purchasing Danish products reduce consumers’ willingness to buy Danish products. However, we find a different pattern of relationships in period 2. Animosity and subjective norms are no longer related to consumers’ willingness to buy, while positive and negative anticipated emotions are.

Service Ethnocentrism: A Conceptual Model (An Abstract)

The service marketing literature has recognized the importance of studying cross-cultural service encounters in which the service provider and the customer are from different cultures (Baker et al. 2008; Sharma et al. 2014; Maher and Sobh 2014). More recently, scholars have examined cross-cultural customer-customer interaction (CCI), which “is the active or passive interaction between two and more customers inside or outside the service setting. CCI may or may not involve verbal communication” (Johnson and Grier 2013, p. 306). The mere presence of one customer next to another is an example of such an interaction.

Consumer Acculturation of Indigenous Minority Community to a Multicultural Expatriate Population: An Abstract

The consumer acculturation literature acknowledges that acculturation is a change that occurs when individuals come into contact with individuals from other cultural backgrounds. However, studies have predominantly examined how migrants acculturate to the culture to which they are immigrating because the effect of the dominant culture on migrants tends to be larger than the opposite (Berry 1993). In this study, we propose to examine how the migrants affect the consumption practices of the local culture. We picked Qatar as a unique context in which locals relative to migrants tend to be a numerical minority. Locals are thought to experience cultural dilemmas in their consumption of products and services from different cultures as well as the tensions that may result from the day-to-day cultural encounters.

The Perceived Threats from Migrants and their Effects on Government Service Equality

ABSTRACT Governments market policies like “products,” hoping that they will receive public support. With the increasing opposition to migrants in many countries, governments face more pressure to enact laws that favor citizens over migrants, assuming that citizens desire preferential treatment. We challenge that assumption by investigating antecedents of Government Service Equality (GSE), which captures the extent to which citizens believe that migrants are entitled to the same level of quality when using government services. Utilizing the justification-suppression model of prejudice and acculturation theory as theoretical underpinning, the article highlights the role of perceived threat in legitimizing discrimination against migrants. The conceptual model distinguishes between two types of threats: symbolic and realistic. Furthermore, the article investigates the role of cosmopolitanism and tradition in driving both types of threats. Results obtained through SEM using 428 surveys collected from host country citizens indicate that both realistic threat (e.g., economy) and symbolic threat (e.g., culture) influence equality perceptions negatively. However, our results reveal that citizens could be divided into two segments: cosmopolitans and traditionalists. Traditionalists, unlike cosmopolitans, do perceive migrants as threatening. In addition, cosmopolitanism has a direct positive influence on GSE. We conclude with a discussion and agenda for future research.

Anxiety About Cultural Dilution and Adoption of a Global Lifestyle

The main purpose of this study is to examine how Kuwaitis, as a minority, react to the influx of expatriates living in Kuwait and how such a reaction affects their consumption behavior. We build upon findings from the social psychology literature to build our theoretical model. Research supports that local populations feel threatened by immigrant populations (Stephan et al. 2002). When the local population is threatened, then locals might express concern about the future existence of the group. This concern is referred to as collective angst in the social psychology literature (Whole et al. 2010). We seek to examine how concern about the future affects Kuwaitis’ lifestyle in the present. Data was collected from Kuwait where foreign migrants represent around 60 % of the total population. The results reveal several interesting findings. First, we find that when expatriates are perceived by Kuwaitis as a source of symbolic threat then Kuwaitis are more likely to be concerned about the existence of Kuwaiti culture in the future (i.e., collective angst). Second, we find that this high level of collective angst leads to the preference for a global consumer lifestyle versus a local lifestyle. Finally we find that individualism strengthens the indirect effect of symbolic threat on the preference for a global lifestyle through collective angst. Thus our results are not consistent with previous literature in suggesting that the experience of collective angst results in behaviors that would seek to eliminate the source of threat.References available upon request.