Abstract:

Multinational brands sometimes tailor localized content in their ads, more and more ads target their emphasis on pro-China sentiment. They may either adopt traditional Chinese element, show respect to China or advocate favorable emotions directly. Our research aimed to examine the bilateral effects of these pro-China ads: How would Chinese consumers react to brands using such ads? And on the other side, what would be the reactions from domestic consumers who share the same origin with the brand? Based on consumer-brand connections and brand relationship perspective, we proposed consumers reactions and latent mechanism behind and tested our hypotheses through a set of cross-cultural experiments. The results showed that when a target brand adopts pro-China ads, Chinese consumers react with more positive attitudes and behavior intentions, while domestic consumers revealed lower level of trust, intimacy and behavior intentions. Moreover, competitors’ adoption of such ads would also affect Chinese and domestic consumers’ reactions. Specifically, when competitors are of different origin from target brand, domestic consumers attributed target brand’s adoption of pro-China ads to environmental factors such as competition. Compared with pure exposure of target brand’s pro-China ads, domestic consumers showed increase in trust and behavior intentions towards target brand.

Key words: Pro-China Ads, National Sentiment, Brand Relationship, Self Connections