Guilty by stereotypic association: Country animosity and brand prejudice and discrimination

This research tests the proposition that brands suffer prejudice and discrimination due to animosity toward a country with which they have a strong stereotypic association. In the first study, attitudinal data collected across a range of brands that vary in terms of the strength of the brand-country association indicate that brands with strong stereotypic association with a country suffer direct prejudice, in the form of more negative attitudes, related to animosity. When the brand-country association is less strong, the relationship between animosity and brand attitudes is moderated by the strength of the stereotypic association. In the second study, the level of brand-country association is manipulated experimentally to provide additional evidence of its moderating role on the relationship between country animosity and both prejudice toward (more negative brand attitudes) and discrimination against (less choice) a new brand.