Executive Summary
Many global brand managers are unsure about what the globality of their brands means to their consumers and what valence this globality dimension engenders. Academic work on the topic is sparse but suggests that consumers associate brand globality with perceptions of quality, prestige, and esteem.
Dimofte, Johansson, and Ronkainen identify the meaning of a global brand for U.S. consumers and then focus on how brand globality affects their perceptions and attitudes. Because most global brands are American, the authors propose and find that the global brand effect is not influenced by consumer ethnocentrism. To avoid the potential confound from actual brands, they use a pretest to elicit open-ended responses about what characterizes a global brand in general. Then, they use the elicited characteristics in a questionnaire administered online to a larger, more representative sample and show the objective characteristics and inferred attributes these brands are perceived to possess. A surprising finding is the lack of a direct quality association for global brands. To further evaluate this, the authors administer a second survey. The results suggest that for most U.S. consumers the quality effect is essentially a size effect, whereas positive affective responses toward global brands emerge despite relatively neutral cognitive responses.
The contributions of this research to the global brand literature are twofold. First, Dimofte, Johansson, and Ronkainen build on previous findings of a positive consumer predisposition toward global brands by explaining its affective, albeit unacknowledged, nature. Second, they depart from previous findings of consumers’ associating positive characteristics with global brands and argue that the findings are an artifact of using actual brand names that engender brand equity associations independent of globality.
Overall, the results suggest that U.S. consumers do not explicitly associate anything special with global brands beyond their broad reach and limited local adaptation. Consumers also generally indicate that brand globality has low importance in their choices. Nevertheless, global brands evoke positive sentiments, though consumers seem to be unable or unwilling to articulate them explicitly. Importantly, this positive halo effect also operates for consumers who do not view global brands favorably.
Global brand managers should take solace that their brands’ globality has a positive effect, even if not acknowledged as such by most consumers or viewed as a negative by some. Although brand globality is not a sufficient condition for quality inferences, it may be a necessary one for eliciting more favorable affective responses.
Biography
Claudiu V. Dimofte is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University, where he specializes in consumer information processing and attitude formation. A native of Romania, he holds a PhD in Marketing from the University of Washington in Seattle. His current research focuses on implicit consumer cognition, including the unconscious processing of brand and marketing communications information.
Johny K. Johansson is McCrane/Shaker Professor of International Business and Marketing at the McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University, where he specializes in international marketing strategy and consumer decision making. A native of Sweden, he holds a PhD in Marketing from the University of California at Berkeley. His current research focuses on Asian and European companies and markets.
Ilkka A Ronkainen is Professor of International Business and Marketing at the McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University, where he specializes in international marketing strategy. A native of Finland, he holds a PhD in International Business from the University of South Carolina in Columbia. His current research focuses on global branding and international trade.
J International Marketing, Volume 16, Number 4, December 2008
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