Effects of country-of-origin stereotypes on consumer responses to product-harm crises
研究外国公司的原产国刻板印象（能力和温暖）如何影响消费者在产品伤害危机中的责备归因和产品态度，并考察消费者民族中心主义、国家敌意和产品类别的调节作用。
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate “how” and “when” the stereotypes of competence and warmth, that are evoked by a foreign company’s country-of-origin (COO), affect blame attributions and/or attitudes toward a company’s products when a company is involved in a product-harm crisis. Design/methodology/approach Study 1 ( n =883) analyzes the psychological mechanisms through which perceived COO competence and warmth differently affect blame attributions and evaluative responses. Study 2 ( n =1,640) replicates Study 1’s findings, and it also investigates how consumer ethnocentrism, animosity toward a country, and product category characteristics moderate the hypothesized COO’s effects. Findings COO competence leads to more favorable attitudes toward the involved company’s products. This effect increases when the company sells high-involvement or utilitarian products. COO warmth leads to more favorable attitudes toward the involved company’s products directly as well as indirectly by diminishing blame attributions. These effects increase when consumers are highly ethnocentric, or the animosity toward a foreign country is high. Originality/value This paper frames the investigation of COO stereotypes in a new theoretical and empirical setting, specifically, a product-harm crisis. It demonstrates that consumers differently evaluate a potential wrongdoing company and its harmful products in a product-harm crisis based on their perceptions of a company’s COO competence and warmth. Finally, it defines the moderating effects of individual, consumer-country-related and product characteristics on the hypothesized COO effects.