Consumer dispositions toward global brands

Purpose: Despite the increasing attention on consumers in emerging markets, there is limited research on the emerging market consumers’ evaluation of global brands. The purpose of this paper is to address this research gap by examining the role of consumer dispositions – cosmopolitanism, need for uniqueness and materialism in attitude and purchase intentions toward global brands from emerging vs developed markets. Design/methodology/approach: A mall intercept method was used to collect responses from shoppers in four major cities in India. The intercept method produced a usable sample of 613 respondents. Each respondent was asked to mark his or her response concerning two global brands – one each from developed and emerging markets separately. Findings: The findings show that cosmopolitanism and need for uniqueness determine emerging market consumers’ attitude toward global brands. Specifically, the authors find that while cosmopolitanism has a higher positive impact on global brands from the developed market, need for uniqueness has a negative impact on global brands from emerging market. Research limitations/implications: The study findings show that need for uniqueness negatively affects attitude toward global brands from emerging markets. This presents a significant challenge for global brands from emerging market when competing with the counterparts from developed markets. Practical implications: The findings show that managers of global brands in emerging markets should develop unique brand positioning that differentiates from international brands. By carefully managing their marketing mix elements (e.g. price, design, distribution), they can induce counter-conformity among consumers for brands that originate in emerging markets. Originality/value: While prior studies suggest that emerging market consumers prefer foreign brands than domestic brands, little attention was focused on the antecedents for such preference. This study considers consumer dispositions, which were not examined in prior research in addressing this research gap.