Adamantios Diamantopoulos

University of Vienna | UniWien · Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre

Focusing on the implications of xenocentric behavior for consumer well-being, we investigate the link between consumer xenocentrism (C-XEN) and consumers’ self-esteem, using conspicuous consumption orientation and brand addiction as mediating variables. To this end, drawing on system justification-, self-concept-, and reference group theories, we d...

Scientific research demands robust findings, yet variability in results persists due to researchers' decisions in data analysis. Despite strict adherence to state-of the-art methodological norms, research results can vary when analyzing the same data. This article aims to explore this variability by examining the impact of researchers' analytical d...

This research integrates two influential research streams in marketing: country-of-origin (COO) and sustainability. The importance of sustainability, that is, the focus to deliver value to consumers based on economic, social and environmental aspects (Elkington, 2004) is increasing. Consumers are demanding sustainable products (Petro, 2022), compan...

Purpose Drawing on cue utilization theory and the theory of motivated reasoning, we investigate the impact of consumer xenocentrism on product preferences in a situation where domestic products objectively outperform their foreign counterparts. Design/methodology/approach We develop and test a model linking xenocentrism to consumers’ preference to...

A cornerstone of successful international marketing is matching product attributes to customer attitudes, values, and lifestyles within or across geographic markets. Strategically, cross-national segmentation constitutes a core theme of international marketing operations aiming at identifying customer segments companies may target within or across...

For international companies, the literature recommends directing segmentation efforts at customer characteristics rather than country characteristics. Consumers’ degree of cosmopolitan orientation has been suggested as a powerful segmentation base, as this characteristic is expected to drive consumers’ tastes and preferences. To advance research on...

Purpose Reactance theory is applied to investigate consumer responses to “buy local” campaigns initiated by government to counteract the effects of an economic crisis, using the COVID-19 pandemic as an illustrative context. Design/methodology/approach A conceptual model is developed, aimed at revealing the extent to which “buy local” campaigns – e...

Ambiguous product cues—cues with multiple interpretation options—may impact consumer decision making. One such ambiguous cue is the designation of a product as “regional” without specifying the exact origin of the product. Here, consumers typically equate “regional” with spatial proximity, yet legally the use of regional labels does not necessarily...

While consumer stereotyping literature has provided useful insights into how various brand characteristics drive consumers’ stereotypical perceptions of brands, the role of consumer characteristics has been neglected. Drawing on the stereotype content model (SCM), this study investigates the simultaneous role of consumer xenocentrism and consumer e...

Accelerating anti-globalization challenges previously undisputed assumptions about the importance of a product’s globalness/localness in purchase decisions. Putting these assumptions to test, we conceptualize globalness/localness as a distinct product attribute and decompose its utility into weight and preference components. Subsequently, we offer...

Purpose The purpose of the study is to highlight the relevance of reactance theory for modeling consumer responses to COVID restrictions. The study also aims to critically evaluate the appropriateness of the most established reactance model (the intertwined model) for studying reactance specifically in relation to freedom threats arising from measu...

Drawing on equity theory, we apply Van Westendorp’s Price Sensitivity Meter (PSM) to compare the “pricing footprints” of a brand originating in countries differing in their country image favorability. This footprint is captured by the different price levels for which consumers perceive the brand to be (a) too cheap (i.e. raise concerns about its qu...

Although the importance of various brand‐related stereotypes held by consumers has been acknowledged in the marketing literature, their interplay has not yet been considered. We derive four alternative theoretical models of the relationships between brand, brand origin and brand user stereotypes and their effects on consumers’ value perceptions. Th...

In the context of the on‐going debate regarding the relevance of the country of origin (COO) phenomenon and drawing from cue utilization theory as well as research on visual attention, we conduct three eye‐tracking experiments that investigate (a) whether consumers naturally detect COO labels, (b) whether such detection influences subsequent behavi...

Purpose – Drawing on the stereotype content model (SCM), the authors investigate the stereotype content transfer (in terms of warmth and competence) from country to brand and the simultaneous impact of these two stereotypes on consumer responses toward brands. Design/methodology/approach – The authors test a structural equation model conceptualizin...

Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) has enjoyed increased popularity as an analytical method among Industrial Marketing Management (IMM) authors over the last years. Despite such popularity, many authors fail to understand the basic principles of the method and reviewers are frequently confronted with manuscripts suffering from erroneous applicatio...

Contributing to the literature on brand stereotyping, we draw on the Stereotype Content Model to investigate whether the content of the brand stereotype (in terms of warmth and competence) impacts consumers' perceptions of functional, emotional and social value. In doing so, we explicitly account for the brand's level of perceived globalness (PBG)...

In many situations, consumers prefer regional over non-regional products and are willing to pay a price premium. Yet, the concept of regionality is often ambiguous and misleading. While consumers perceive something ‘regional’ as being produced within their direct home region, legally the term only describes something produced within any specific re...

Purpose This paper aims to draw from the stereotype content model (SCM) to investigate the mediating role of country-triggered emotions on the relationship between country stereotypes and intentions to visit a country as well as the boundary conditions under which such mediation occurs. Design/methodology/approach Two-hundred and eighty-three cons...

Research has long established the existence of a global brand halo that benefits global brands by triggering “global equals better” inferences by consumers. Nevertheless, little is known about the conditions under which this halo may or may not be used or about whether and, if so, how it can situationally fade. Drawing from regret theory, the autho...

A dynamic and growing body of marketing literature draws from the Stereotype Content Model's (SCM) dimensions, warmth and competence, to describe individuals' perception of various market-related stimuli (e.g., salespeople, employees, products) and predict their influence on subsequent behavior. However, the operationalization of these fundamental...

Contributing to research on consumer segmentation in the context of country-of-origin (COO) effects, the current study focuses on the need for cognition (NFC) and need for affect (NFA) as conditioning variables on the links between country image and attitude towards the country on the one hand and consumers’ product-country image (PCI) assessments...

Although prior research is congested with constructs intended to capture consumers’ dispositions toward globalization and global/local products, their effects appear to replicate with difficulty while little is known about the underlying theoretical mechanisms. This investigation revisits the relationship between prominent consumer dispositions (co...

Purpose Marketing accountability is currently receiving increased attention from scholars and practitioners alike, with its usage mostly being linked to the improved position of marketing within the firm and to better firm performance. The purpose of this study is to assess whether a supplier’s marketing accountability also has an unobserved signal...

Building on the limited literature on consumer xenocentrism, this study investigates the route through which the construct impacts consumers’ purchase intentions for (a) domestic, (b) foreign genuine, and (c) foreign counterfeit brands, while controlling for product category effects and the impact of consumer ethnocentrism and cosmopolitanism. Draw...

Drawing on international branding literature and stereotyping research, the current study seeks to answer the following research questions: (1) do consumers’ perceptions of brand globalness/localness influence their stereotypical assessments of brands in terms of their warmth and competence, and (2) do these stereotypical dimensions impact consumer...

Despite the well-documented importance of consumer-brand relationships, international branding research has not yet investigated whether a brand's perceived globalness and localness influence consumers' identification with the brand. Drawing on brand relationship theory and global/local branding literature, the present research theorizes on how per...

This research addresses the unexplored postpurchase dynamics of global/local brand choices by investigating the experience of regret in global versus local brand purchases. Drawing on regret theory, the authors demonstrate in four complementary studies that the global/local availability of both chosen and forgone brands influences consumer response...

The current article is a rejoinder to "A Call for Theory to Support the Use of Causal-Formative Indicators: A Commentary on Bollen and Diamantopoulos." Our article comments on the 6 research questions raised by Hardin (2017) in his constructive commentary on our original article (i.e., "In Defense of Causal-Formative Indicators: A Minority Report")...

Drawing from negativity bias, fading affect bias, and ambivalence literature, we provide evidence that consumer nostalgia acts as a countervailing force to consumer animosity in historically connected markets (HCMs), that is, trading countries that previously were part of the same country but are now independent. For both Soviet-era and (new) Russi...

Although personality traits have repeatedly been shown to influence consumer behavior, their impact on willingness to buy global brands has yet to be empirically investigated. Based on a four-country sample (N = 4539) of South East European consumers, we test alternative pathways linking consumer personality traits to global brand purchase intentio...

Drawing on the stereotype content model (SCM), we investigate the impact of both explicit and implicit country stereotypes on consumer preferences. In Study 1, we show that the competence dimension of the SCM (measured both explicitly and implicitly) drives purchase intention by positively influencing brand affect. In Study 2, we disentangle furthe...

Drawing from international branding literature and schema incongruity research, the present study (a) assesses foreign brand communication effectiveness by juxtaposing three alternative advertising approaches based on local, foreign and global consumer culture imagery, and (b) investigates the mechanism underlying consumers' responses to foreign br...

Purpose Drawing from the entitativity theory, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the European Union (EU) as a superordinate entity and investigate the extent to which a “Made-in-EU” designation leads to superior/inferior brand evaluations and through them to higher/lower purchase intentions than different country-specific designations. Desig...

Extending the study of consumer-brand relationships in the post-purchase stages of consumer decision making and in situations involving unfavorable comparisons with foregone brands, this research investigates the role of consumer-brand identification on consumer responses to purchase regret. Drawing on regret theory and consumer-brand relationship...

Despite extensive evidence that a brand's country-of-origin (COO) affects consumers' brand evaluations and behavioral intentions, consumers are often reluctant to admit this influence. Challenging the proclaimed irrelevance of the COO concept, the present study assesses the phenomenon of COO cue usage denial, an unconscious defense mechanism that c...

Unlike the abundance of research on brand- and consumer-related determinants of global/local brand preference, little is known about whether/how the product category affects consumer choices between local and global brands. Drawing from schema theory, the authors (a) argue that consumers rely on their product category schemata to form perceptions o...

Purpose This paper aims to critically comment Rossiter’s “How to use C-OAR-SE to design optimal standard measures” in the current issue of EJM and provides a broader perspective on Rossiter’s C-OAR-SE framework and measurement practice in marketing in general. Design/methodology/approach The paper is conceptual, based on interpretation of measurem...

This study integrates country-of-origin and global/local branding literatures to investigate how country- and brand-specific factors influence consumer preferences. Drawing from the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) in social psychology, we operationalize country perceptions by means of warmth and competence judgments and juxtapose them with consumers...

Foreign and domestic product purchase behavior largely depends on consumer predispositions. The dominant construct in international marketing literature explaining such behavior has been consumer ethnocentrism which is conceptually anchored in social identity theory. However, such a perspective overlooks evidence that certain consumers are consiste...

The branding literature repeatedly emphasizes the role brands play in shaping consumer identities. In this context, the rise of global consumer groups gives global brands a prominent role as potential tools for consumer identification. Specifically, consumer segments that idealize global communities and/or hold positive attitudes toward various asp...

Purpose – Higher-order factor models have recently been dismissed as a ‘misleading’, ‘meaningless’, and ‘needless’ approach for modeling multidimensional constructs (Lee and Cadogan, 2013; L & C, 2013 hereafter). The purpose of this paper is to show that – in contrast to L & C’s (2013) verdict – higher-order factor models are still a legitimate ope...

International marketing research has shown vivid interest in consumers’ positive dispositions toward foreign countries and globalization. Motivated by the aim to segment international consumer markets, the literature has introduced and adopted a plethora of constructs and measurement instruments to capture such dispositions. However, the current st...

This study examines the factors which affect an exporter’s evaluation of research information and develops an information quality measure. The quality of research information scale was examined for unidimensionality, reliability, and validity. Relationships between quality of research information and general firm characteristics, the export situati...

The systematic gathering and utilization of information is a key ingredient for a successful export marketing strategy (Ricks, 1993). Most work in the area of export marketing information has focused on information acquisition, i.e. the types and sources of information consulted by exporters (see Leonidou and Katsikeas (1997) for a review). In cont...

This paper compares the characteristics and activities of female marketing academics at U.K. universities with those of their male colleagues. Specifically, the characteristics are explored in terms of demographic profiles, educational background and career structures, while activity patterns provide insights into the composition and length of the...

Despite a rise in environmental consciousness amongst the British public during the past decade, very little academic research has been conducted on consumers’ perceptions of environmental problems. This holds particularly for research relating to perceptions of environmental issues in industrial sectors and service industries. This paper aims to r...

This study forms part of a larger project on differences in consumer preferences across various countries. It presents an initial investigation of the scope for marketing standardisation in EC markets through a comparison of product attribute preferences for cars of consumers in Britain and Germany. In a multi-cue context, emphasis is placed on the...

This paper examines two issues concerning the revision by marketing managers of quarterly sales forecasts initially produced by an extrapolative model. An analysis is undertaken of the extent to which the frequency of forecast revision is systematically related to the performance of the forecasting model employed. The second issue concerns the degr...

One of the oldest concerns of international marketers is whether the "foreignness" of a product makes it less preferable to consumers (Schooler 1965, 1971). A number of studies have documented that a bias against foreign products and in favor of domestic ones does in fact exist (for reviews see Bilkey and Nes 1982; Ozsomer and Cavusgil 1991; Papado...

While the application of single items (SI) for construct measurement was generally accepted in the 1960s and 1970s, seminal works by Churchill (1979), Peter (1979), and Jacoby (1978) marked the start of a rethinking process by pointing out their deficits in terms of validity and reliability and by offering comprehensive guidelines for developing an...

Causal-formative indicators directly affect their corresponding latent variable. They run counter to the predominant view that indicators depend on latent variables and are thus often controversial. If present, such indicators have serious implications for factor analysis, reliability theory, item response theory, structural equation models, and mo...

This paper empirically investigates the mediating role of consumer attitudes towards globality and identification with global brands on the relationship between consumers’ global orientations towards globality and global brand ownership. Findings of a study of 300 French consumers support the full mediation hypothesis as implied by an orientationa...

This research replicates the study of Steenkamp, Batra and Alden (2003) on perceived brand globalness (PBG) and provides a stringent test of their documented effects through (a) considering the impact of PBG on consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP), and (b) experimentally manipulating brand globalness. Across four studies, the results suggest that co...

This paper investigates the predictive validity of several positive consumer dispositions towards globality on global-domestic and global-foreign brand ownership. Based on two studies of US consumers, results show that several dispositions conceptually and empirically overlap and that their predictive validity is limited at best. These surprising f...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper was to conduct an experimental design of Americans’ preferences for the English version of Chinese brand names by drawing from prior research in psychology, linguistics and marketing. The impact of string length and semantic relevance to English on meaningfulness, memorability and likeability of brand names from...

Consumers’ preferences for domestic over imported products have been investigated in various isolated studies, but never in a single model incorporating several in-group and out-group consumer orientations at the same time. Building on social identity theory, this study develops and tests—in two different countries—a conceptual model that assesses...

Origin designations have long been recognized as relevant cue impacting consumers’ evaluations and behavior towards products or brands. Yet, one aspect that has widely been neglected is the concept of entitativity. The general understanding within origin research is that the relevant entity is the country. However, consumers may also perceive entit...

This paper explores whether, and to what extent, different consumer perceptions form barriers to product standardization across two EU countries. Using washing machine purchases in Britain and Germany as empirical backdrop, an attempt is made to quantify the impact of different product attributes on the overall product preferences of consumers in b...

While the EU has cleared away most regulatory barriers to standardization, firms serving the Single European Market continue to be concerned about differences in consumer preferences that may still limit the standardization potential. This paper attempts to shed light on this issue by contrasting product attribute preferences of British and German...

This study compares Finnish and British exporters of ‘design products’ in terms of their export marketing research activities. Control is exercised over a number of contextual influences that may potentially impinge on the implementation of export marketing research behaviour and thus confound country-specific differences. The analysis reveals few...

Aguirre-Urreta and Marakas [Aguirre-Urreta M, Marakas G (2013) Research note—Partial least squares and models with formatively specified endogenous constructs: A cautionary note. Inform. Systems Res., ePub ahead of print September 5, http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/isre.2013.0493] aim to evaluate the performance of partial least squares (PLS) path modeli...

Formatively-measured constructs (FMCs) are increasingly used in marketing research as well as in other disciplines. Although constructs operationalized by means of formative indicators have mostly been placed in exogenous positions in structural equation models, they also frequently occupy structurally endogenous positions. The vast majority of stu...

Prior research acknowledges employees' crucial role in building strong service brands, yet empirical research on how to turn employees into brand champions remains scarce and has been largely approached from an internal branding perspective. Drawing on social identity and social exchange theories, this study takes a broader organizational perspecti...

This paper addresses Rönkkö & Evermann’s (2013) criticisms of the partial least squares (PLS) approach to structural equation modeling (SEM). We contend that the alleged shortcomings of PLS are not due to problems with the technique, but instead to three problems with Rönkkö & Evermann’s (2013) study: (1) the adherence to the common factor model, (...

In recent years, export segmentation effectiveness has attracted increasing attention in academic literature. The current study acknowledges this construct’s ability to capture the proximal outcomes of export segmentation efforts and contributes to the literature by investigating its key drivers as well as its link to export performance. Results id...

This research investigates perceived brand globalness, brand origin image, and brand origin–extension fit as drivers of brand extension success that are mediated through parent brand quality and brand–extension fit. The authors present two complementary studies based on consumer samples from a mature and an emerging market respectively. In both stu...

The use of MIMIC models in formative measurement is revisited in light of recent criticism concerning their validity. Specifically, the conventional MIMIC model is compared to alternative specifications recently suggested in the literature and issues relating to replacing formative latent variables with composites, predefining rather than estimatin...

Extant country-of-origin research has focused on the deliberate use of country-specific associations (CSAs) as a cognitive cue, captured by consumer responses to direct questioning. However, such responses only capture rational and verbally held aspects of CSAs and do not reveal emotional and nonverbally held aspects. Drawing from dual-coding theor...

Country-of-origin (COO) research typically regards COO cue usage as a conscious and controlled process dependent on consumers’ intention to use COO information. However, emerging evidence indicates that country stereotypes can affect consumers’ brand evaluations regardless of intention. In three complementary experiments, this study investigates ho...

Several problematic issues in Lee, Cadogan and Chamberlain’s (2013) paper on MIMIC models and formative measurement are identified and discussed. It is argued that MIMIC models can be used with formative measurement specifications and that replacing the formative measurement model with a (non-testable) composite does not contribute to better measur...

The goal of many product positioning strategies is to create similarity perceptions with other products in the market. Product managers often seek to reach this goal by communicating the same information as competitors (e.g., highlighting the same product feature as an existing competitor product), which however, can also generate negative side eff...

Establishing predictive validity of measures is a major concern in marketing research. This paper investigates the conditions favoring the use of single items versus multi-item scales in terms of predictive validity. A series of complementary studies reveals that the predictive validity of single items varies considerably across different (concrete...

For international companies, the literature recommends directing segmentation efforts at customer characteristics rather than country characteristics. Consumers’ degree of cosmopolitan orientation has been suggested as a powerful segmentation base as this characteristic is expected to drive consumers’ tastes and preferences. This article aims at ad...