Prepurchase Determinants of Brand Avoidance: The Moderating Role of Country-of-Origin Familiarity

ABSTRACT

This report provides an overview of the concept of prepurchase brand avoidance, by identifying the motivating factors in a developing nation. Additionally, the authors aim to explain the negative effect of country-of-origin familiarity leading to brand avoidance. Relationships between constructs (undesired self, negative social influence, perceived animosity, and perceived risk) were hypothesized and data were collected via an online survey, where 286 respondents provided an evaluation for the brands they avoided. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling via AMOS. To date, anti-consumption studies have taken place in developed countries where high agency and abundant choice enable brand avoidance to occur; the authors find that brand avoidance also exists in developing countries, and for all categories of brands, undesired self-congruence is the key determinant for prepurchase brand avoidance. The study did not use any particular product categories. Results need to be expanded and confirmed with other product categories in other emergent markets. Developing nations constitute the fastest growing markets in the world, and knowledge of the factors motivating brand avoidance in these contexts are a competitive advantage (e.g., undesired self is one important variable to focus on to make brands acceptable in such markets). This report provides new insights into consumer judgments of prepurchase brand avoidance in an emerging market.     

Anti-consumption: An overview and research agenda

This introduction to the Journal of Business Research special issue on anti-consumption briefly defines and highlights the importance of anti-consumption research, provides an overview of the latest studies in the area, and suggests an agenda for future research on anti-consumption.     

Reverse stigma in the Freegan community

Freegans are anti-consumers who sustain themselves through dumpster diving and the consumption of disposed goods. Mainstream consumers consider Freeganism dirty and tainted—a stigma. Through a qualitative investigation of Freeganism and its practitioners, this research contributes a multi-dimensional framework of reverse stigma. The framework explicates the mechanisms by which stigmatized individuals re-direct stigma onto normative culture. Specifically, these mechanisms are ideological reversal, practice reversal, and resource reversal. While past research emphasizes defensive, self-directed stigma management strategies, this research shows that some communities adopt offensive, others-directed strategies to reject their stigmatized status and redirect the stigma to normative others.     

Anti-branding on the internet

Anti-brand web sites are online spaces that focus negative attention on a specific targeted brand. Although anti-consumption movements on the internet have been gaining in numbers and in strength, research has not fully uncovered the nature of such sites and their impact on brand value and consumer anti-consumption. We present a conceptual framework describing online anti-branding and investigate causal relationships in two empirical studies. Study 1 investigates the brand value's impact on likelihood of the presence of anti-brand sites. Strong brands are more likely to have anti-brand sites. Study 2 is a content analysis of a representative sample of anti-brand sites that assesses the nature of the language used by such sites. Anti-brand sites use three types of language — market, ideological and transactional speech. The study finds that market speech is most prevalent and relates to brand value.