George Balabanis

• City, University of London

Purpose The phenomenon of global brands taking a stance on crucial, yet polarizing, socio-political issues, namely global brand activism, is rising. However, how consumer views on this practice are shaped when global branding elements are factored in remains unclear. Drawing from the functional theory of attitude formation, this study investigates...

Purpose The study addresses gaps in sustainable luxury consumption research by analyzing the role of social norms in different cultural settings. It investigates how social norms, self-control, conspicuousness and future orientation shape sustainable luxury consumption in individualistic (UK) versus collectivist (China) national cultures. Design/m...

Purpose This paper aims to examine whether brands derive their personalities from their culture of origin, the stereotypes about their cultures of their origin or the cultures of their buyers. It also examines which of a culture’s personality traits are more transmittable to brand personalities (BPs), as well as the consequences of the BP resemblan...

Based on the excitation-transfer model, this study considers how pondering on reasons for buying a particular country’s products influences country image (CI). We use an experimental approach to test our hypotheses and check for differences between unreflective/ad lib CI and reflective/reasoned CI measurements. The findings indicate differences bet...

The concept of consumer ethnocentrism was introduced more than 30 years ago, and since then it has received keen interest among academic researchers. However, empirical evidence in published studies has been inconclusive and many macro-drivers of consumer ethnocentrism received cursory attention. This study meta-analyses 240 studies from 57 countri...

Although the world of sports has witnessed numerous corruption scandals, the effects of perceived corruption in sports have not been sufficiently investigated in the literature. The aim of this paper is to examine how sports team identification weakens people’s perceptions of corruption in sports, and how it dampens corruption’s negative effects on...

This study examines the factors that influence what is an acceptable price for a luxury product. It considers how much people are prepared to pay for different categories of luxury products to satisfy their desire for status and to avoid public embarrassment that may result from their level of public self-consciousness. The effects of these factors...

This article responds to calls for further research on ethical issues in advertising. The study examines whether advertising strategies which use female-disparaging themes are perceived as ethical, and what effect this has on ad and brand attitudes. It also examines whether or not humour assuages ethical evaluations of female-disparaging ads. The f...

Five theoretical approaches can predict favoritism toward domestic and foreign brands. This article applies a contrastive perspective to examine social identity, personal identity, cultural identity, system justification, and categorical cognition theories and their attendant constructs. The authors propose a set of main-effects hypotheses as well...

Bloggers in the postmodern era can influence the behaviour of consumers and alter their perceptions. The current study looks at the blogger influence phenomenon from a different theoretical perspective than existing literature did. By combining information behaviour and communication theory, it proposes a new conceptual framework by relying on the...

This paper investigates the effect of Schwartz's (1992) four cultural value orientations on the values consumers ascribe to luxury products. In response to well-documented criticisms of assessing cultural values as aggregates measured at the nation level, this study examines the effects of value orientation measured at the individual level. Using s...

The global personal luxury goods industry is facing a “new normal” of lower growth over the long term (Bain & Company 2016). To compete in the strained market environment, many luxury brands try to launch limited-quantity (LQ) products to enhance the attraction of some items. Although scholars and practitioners paid a lot attention to the concept o...

Most studies of consumer animosity employed only explicit self-report measures on consumers’ responses and did not systematically compare the effects across product categories. To fill this gap, the current study investigated the impacts of economic animosity not only on consumers’ explicit but implicit attitudes and compared the influences between...

The link between performance outcomes and strategic choices has been the subject of numerous studies (see Mirabeau & Maguire, 2014). The success of any strategy type is determined by the outcomes it produces when aligned with key contingencies (Katsikeas, Samiee, & Theodosiou, 2006). Along the strategic alignment literature, authors conjure the sig...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the inconsistency of explicit and implicit domestic country bias (DCB) across different types of products and in the context of two countries. Design/methodology/approach Two studies in two countries are conducted to examine the inconsistencies in implicit and explicit DCB. The first study collecte...

Purpose Despite the well-established impact of consumer ethnocentrism (CET) on purchase intentions, extant literature offers limited evidence on actual purchase behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to address the gap by investigating the factors underlying variations in CET behaviour using reported brand purchases. Product category, product cos...

Certain product categories, such as cars, software, and even perfume, are strongly identified with certain countries (Kotler and Gertner 2002) (e.g., French perfume; German cars, etc), but not all the products of a country benefit the same from a strong COO image. However, despite the prolificacy of COO-related studies, the observed effects are sub...

The use of different types of sex appeal is effective tool in advertising (Reichert et al. 2003, Belch et al. 1990, Reichert 2003) with positive effects on attention, attitudes and emotional arousal (Morrison … Sherman, 1972, Alexander … Judd, 1978, Wilson … Moor, 1979). Similar evidence comes from practitioners. The advertising agency Gallup … Rob...

Place branding scholars and practitioners have increasingly highlighted the influence that corporate image can exert on the image of the country of origin (COI). Yet, there is remarkably little theoretical and empirical research on this influence. Filling this gap is important in relation to both theory and practice. The aim of the proposed study i...

The image of the country is an important asset that directly influences the welfare and development of a nation. However, despite the efforts of many boards and industry associations in their communications to promote a country’s image very little is known about the cumulative process and sources that shape a country’s image. Most of the current re...

Research indicates that consumers unequivocally tend to be biased in favor of their home country’s products and against foreign products (Herche 1992; Levin and Jasper 1996; Shimp and Sharma 1987; Supphellen and Gronhaug 2003; Supphellen and Rittenburg 2001; Verlegh 2007). This bi-directional phenomenon of biased perceptions of products according t...

On the basis of intended marketing strategy plans, firms design administrative systems to support strategy implementation. In increasingly turbulent business environments—characterized by complexity, scarce resources, and increasing number of competitive opportunities and threats—firms are forced to alter intended and realize emergent strategies mo...

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...

This study examines the differential effects of the benefits customers receive from a loyalty program (LP) on satisfaction with the LP, trust in the LP, and store loyalty for high- and low-end fashion retailers. With survey data from U.S. LP subscribers, the study tests the relationships using multiple regressions and analysis of covariance. The re...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine women’s reactions to celebrity endorsers holding positive and negative public images and the consequences for purchase intentions of the endorsed product. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on the social comparison literature and applies the theory of upward and downward comparisons to the c...

Co-branding is part of the growing field of brand-driven innovation which differs from brand extensions because it deals with two existing brands that carry over their images to the new product, e.g., Philips’ launch of an electric razor with Nivea. However, the degree to which this happens is largely unknown. This study goes beyond attitude transf...

There is an increasing interest in the study of the role played by emotions in marketing and advertising in the recent years. According to Hirschman and Holbrook (1982), they may often be crucial as “primary motivator of behaviour”, playing an important role in the both cognitive processes and outcomes (Erevelles 1998). Effect of emotions on implic...

Empirical evidence shows that ethnocentric bias varies in its intensity from country to country (Cleveland et al. 2009) and also from product to product category (Balabanis and Diamantopoulos 2004; Cleveland et al. 2009; Verlegh 2007).

This paper develops a model that explains how an individual’s self-concept and a number of mediating individual traits impact luxury consumption behavior. This model can assist managers of luxuries in better segmenting their markets and in predicting consumer reactions to changes in their marketing strategy.

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...

Export intermediaries (Els) play an important role in international trade and they are instrumental to the export success of many manufacturing firms. The main benefits exporters get from export intermediaries is a set of services that may not be able to offer themselves and almost instant access to new markets. In general it has been admitted that...

This paper develops and tests a model explaining how an individual’s self-concept and a number of mediating individual traits impact snob luxury consumption behavior. Leibenstein (1950) highlighted the importance of “external effects on utility”, that is, utility derived due to factors other than the properties inherent in a product. While this gen...

It is widely accepted that customer relationships are important to the profitability of a company. Especially, customer relationship development drivers such as customer loyalty, word of mouth, share of wallet and duration of the relationship are critical factors in increasing profitability and creating long-term relationships between the organizat...

Although, extant studies have explored consumer-character relationship within a programme (Karrh, 1998, Scott and Craig Lees, 2003 and Russell and Stern, 2006), no study has explored the effect of celebrity status of an actor portraying a character in any given placement sequence. This paper seeks to extend current understanding of brand placements...

This paper explains how the self-concept and a number of mediating traits impact luxury consumption. Even though Leibenstein (1950) described several “external effects” on utility, in marketing luxury consumption is still seen as a single, generic, behavior aiming at status gains (Han, Nunes and Drèze, 2010; Nelissen and Meijers, 2011). Research, h...

In the last decade loyalty programs have gained popularity across various industries. They are one of the most popular marketing tools that companies use to increase retention, enhance loyalty and gather ‘big data’. The number of companies adopting loyalty programs is rapidly increasing with fashion department stores grown their loyalty program sub...

Prior research has suggested that many consumers prefer domestic to foreign products, even when the quality is lower and the price is higher. Such bias is attributed to consumer ethnocentrism. This study critically examines the current conceptualizations of consumer ethnocentrism and proposes an extension of its conceptual boundaries and measuremen...

Within the export strategy literature most research has focused on the content of the strategy and very little work is available on how export strategies are developed. Several scholars come to the view that modern firms that operate in dynamic and diverse business environments need to rethink the ways they develop their strategies and make the str...

Effect of emotions on brand placement effectiveness is, hitherto, an unexplored area. This study examines the impact of positive emotions (happy, interest) and level of character-brand interaction level (CIL) on consumers’ response to brand placements. In the experiments conducted, it was observed that consumers in a positive emotional state were m...

Notwithstanding the growing literature on strategy making, limited attention has been given to the formulation process of marketing strategies. Grounded on enactment theory, this study perceives the external environment as a source of information and organizations as information-processing entities. Our conceptualization emphasizes on the strategic...

There is no doubt that the service sector has become a dominant factor in national economies the last decade. Within the service sector thought, there are different service contexts in which distinct types of relationships emerge, varying in magnitude, strength and attributes (Veloutsou et al., 2002). As Paolo and Laurent (2010, p. 133) state “cros...

This article examines the impact of various individual differences on consumers' propensity to engage in two distinct forms of conspicuous (publicly observable) luxury consumption behavior. Status seeking is an established driver, but other managerially relevant drivers can also explain conspicuous consumption of luxuries. The study develops and em...

Although many process-based studies appear in the strategic management literature, little attention has been devoted to the formation process of marketing strategies. Drawing on enactment and information-processing theories, this study views the external environment as a source of information (i.e. enacted) and organizations as information-processi...

Event synopsis: Marketing research has been challenging since almost its initial steps. Nowadays the digital world is changing consumer patterns, emerging new companies, and in the end eliciting a new society. This is not the only recent change; co-creation, sustainability, corporate social responsibility, intercultural relationships in a global wo...

Within the context of surrogate boycotts for multinational corporations (MNCs), the author develops a conceptual framework which examines how the interaction between expectations of boycott objectives’ attainment, the ascribed egregiousness of the principal offender and a MNC's actions, activism, concern for the boycott issue and personal sacrifice...

There is no doubt that the service sector has become a dominant factor in national economies the last decade. Within the service sector thought, there are different service contexts in which distinct types of relationships emerge, varying in magnitude, strength and attributes (Veloutsou et al., 2002). As Paolo and Laurent (2010, p. 133) state “cros...

This paper examines the impact of a number of psychological factors on consumers' propensity to engage in the “bandwagon” type of luxury consumption. It develops and empirically confirms a conceptual model of bandwagon consumption of luxury products. In general, results show that a consumer's interdependent self-concept underlies bandwagon luxury c...

Visually impaired consumers often suffer one of the worst marketplace stresses when processing product information. Despite there being around 314 million blind or visually impaired people worldwide, today's marketplace does not yet adequately address these stresses. This study develops and tests a theoretical model of how visually impaired consume...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test the applicability of product typicality in explaining the product‐specificity of country of origin (COO) effects. Design/methodology/approach – To help select stimuli used in the study, two dimensions of product typicality regarding COO images were created. A total of 416 participants from a business...

Mounting empirical evidence shows that consumers often associate brands with the wrong country of origin (COO) or are unable to classify a brand to any COO. In this study, the authors investigate the consequences of brand origin misclassification and nonclassification on consumers' brand image evaluations and associated purchase intentions. Drawing...

Book synopsis: Henley Business School is delighted to be hosting the 18th International Colloquium on Relationship Marketing. A strategic objective of Henley Business School is to deliver high quality contributions to thought leadership, through research into the management of organisation so there is a natural fit with the aims of the Colloquium....

Event synopsis: Understanding marketing based on customer relationships becomes a necessity for understanding how to orchestrate a firm in service competition. Services marketing can learn from the many different theatrical movements that have been developed to create distinct audience responses. The notion of role playing can be used in this conte...

The huge amounts spent on store security and crime prevention worldwide, not only costs international businesses, but also amounts to a hidden tax on those law-binding consumers who bear higher prices. Most previous research has focused on shoplifting and ignored many other ways in which consumers cheat businesses. Using a hybrid of both qualitativ...

The authors apply a classification perspective to (1) examine the extent to which consumers can identify the correct country of origin (COO) of different brands of consumer durables, (2) investigate the factors facilitating/hindering correct COO identification, and (3) trace the implications of correct/incorrect COO identification on brand evaluati...

This paper examines how online retailers can combine their strategies on differentiation and market scope (segmentation) to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Drawing on a sample of UK grocery e-buyers, the authors classified e-shoppers as either goal-oriented or experiential, and empirically assessed the impact of a number of possible dif...

Despite its increasing importance on current literature, prior research on export strategy development is limited to the examination of the effectiveness of only two strategy-making modes (formal planning and the entrepreneurial mode) in a non-comparative manner. In contrast, this study evaluates and compares the effects of four different strategy-...

The literature on national identity and consumption has grown tremendously over the past decade and is currently of significant interest in a variety of fields including anthropology, sociology, social and political psychology as well as business. This two-country study examines three different national identity constructs (nationalism, patriotism...

The advertising industry is increasingly using mobile technology to communicate and research. This paper examines the use of the short messaging service (SMS) on mobile phones to recruit samples for probability web and telephone surveys. The influence of topic salience, sponsor identity and repeated contacts on decision to participate in the survey...

Loyalty, its antecedents, and its consequences have been considered extensively. Store loyalty, in particular e-store loyalty, has not, however, received the same level of attention despite the increase in the number of organisations that sell directly over the Internet. This paper focuses on two antecedents of e-store loyalty, perceived switching...

Purpose The main objective of the study is to classify export intermediaries (EIs) on the basis of their service offering and to understand how they adjust the composition of their service‐mix to a number of internal and external contingencies. Design/methodology/approach A set of hypotheses were developed and tested on data collected from a rando...

This study uses a multidimensional unfolding approach to examine the preference patterns of U.K. consumers for domestic products and those originating from specific foreign countries for eight product categories. Results indicate that the observed variability in preferences is linked to consumer ethnocentrism. However, the latter's capability in ex...

Export marketing research over the last four decades has covered a number of theoretical and practical issues such as standardisation and customisation, export development processes, barriers to exporting, export performance, etc. Rapid technological, institutional, legislative, economic and attitudinal changes across the globe pose challenges for...

The relationship between the adoption of an entrepreneurial posture and export performance has rarely been explored in the export marketing literature and this empirical inquiry strives to fill this gap. Following a review of the relevant literature, specific organisational and environmental factors were identified as potential determinants of firm...

The study examines the impact of product, functional and geographical diversification on the sales, exports and profitability of export intermediaries (EIs). It is based on a mailed survey of a sample of 135 British EIs. The results indicated that product and unrelated functional diversification are important to an EI's export stability. EIs that t...

By using a core element of culture, human values, the paper seeks to identify patterns in the way individuals perceive other countries and their products. Based on the above a conceptual framework and a set of hypotheses were developed. Variables such as direct contact with a country, fluency in a country’s language as well as demographic differenc...

The study examines how demographics, other forms of compulsive behaviour and personality are related to the buying frequency and compulsiveness in lottery tickets and scratch-cards. An integrative framework is developed and tested in a sample of respondents. Results indicated that the buying compulsivenesses in lottery tickets and scratch-cards hav...

The study explores the relationship between human values and consumer ethnocentrism. Schwartz's (1992) framework of human values is used as the basis of the study. Hypotheses linking values and consumer ethnocentrism are developed and tested in samples of consumers drawn from Turkey and the Czech Republic respectively. Findings indicated that the v...

The study investigates the impact of patriotism, nationalism and internationalism as antecedents to consumer ethnocentrism in Turkey and the Czech Republic. Controlling for demographics, the findings indicate that the impact of patriotism and nationalism is not consistent across the two countries. Consumer ethnocentrism in Turkey is fueled by patri...

The study examines how different consumers evaluate online shopping sites set upby bricks-and-mortar retailers. In particular, it examines how differences in consumers' informationprocessing abilities and motivation as well as in their predispositionstowards a site's material affect their attitudes towards that site and theamount of time they spend...

This study attempts to determine and explain the service-offering behavior of British export intermediaries (EIs). It was empirically confirmed that EIs offer two categories of services: transaction-creating and physical-fulfillment services. It was postulated that the extent to which an EI offers these types of services is influenced by a set of f...

This study examines the degree of standardisation of advertising strategies for a sample of multinational enterprises in Middle Eastern markets. To date, very little has been researched or written about advertising standardisation in this region, despite the growth of the advertising industry and the emergence of many new pan-Arab media opportuniti...

The study focuses on consumer-related factors that affect the success of traditional store-based retailers' ventures on Internet shopping. In particular, the impact of income, involvement, home shopping and Internet shopping experience, attitudes towards a retailer's brand and attitudes towards a retailer's web site on consumers' intentions to buy...

The study is based on a survey of 135 British International Trade Intermediaries. The main objectives are to identify (a) the factors that enhance co-operation and reduce conflict between an ITI and its suppliers and (b) the impact of conflict and cooperation on the maintenance of long-term relationships. Based on the marketing channel literature,...