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The present paper explores how advertisers use consumer culture positioning (CCP) strategies in advertising across countries and product categories.

The study employs a content analysis approach to investigate usage of CCP strategies and symbols across different CCP strategies, countries and product categories. The authors focussed on country of origin (COO) cues as symbols of CCP. The authors collected printed advertisements from countries at different levels of economic development and communication orientation for the content analysis, namely, Austria (n = 182), Hungary (n = 199) and Turkey (n = 120) and products with high- vs low-involvement levels.

Findings of this study indicated that global consumer culture positioning (GCCP) and local consumer culture positioning (LCCP) advertisements relied more on implicit symbols, while foreign consumer culture positioning (FCCP) advertisements predominantly employed explicit ones. Types of symbols and their utilisation varied across countries and product categories, with language, tag lines/logos and brand names being key components across different advertisements.

The results document the practices of CCP-based advertising, offering important insights on whether and how symbolism can be effectively used for communicating different CCPs across markets.

Little is known in terms of how specific symbols are used to communicate consumers’ culture. In this study, the authors analysed the content of 501 real-print advertisements across multiple countries and product categories. This study contributes to the theory and practice by revealing how consumers’ culture manifests through diverse COO symbols in advertising imagery and by facilitating the application of such manifestations across market contexts.

As speed and complexity of electronic systems increase, the interconnect density has become the critical limitation to the performance of electrical systems. The performance of computing and switching systems can be increased by optimizing the interconnect density and throughput. At the board to board level, electrical interconnects at high speeds require a bulky and expensive backplane. At the chip to chip area, the allocation of interconnects limits the performance of the chips. Electrical lossy lines limit the maximum interconnect distance due to reflections, risetime degradation, increased delay, attenuation and cross talk . Optical interconnects present the possibility of solving the interconnect problems by potentially achieving a high bandwidth and high volume density of channels. At high data rates (greater than 1 Gb/s) several channels may operate with negligible mutual interference.

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.

The authors test a structural equation model conceptualizing brand stereotypes as full mediators between country stereotypes and consumer outcomes. In addition, in a moderated mediation analysis, the authors investigate the role of brand typicality and utilitarianism/hedonism in potentially moderating the country to brand stereotype content transfer.

Country warmth and competence, respectively, impact brand warmth and competence, thus confirming the hypothesized stereotype content transfer. This transfer is found to be robust and not contingent on brands' perceived typicality of their country of origin. However, brands' utilitarian nature amplifies the positive impact of country competence on brand competence. Finally, brand stereotypes fully mediate the impact of country stereotypes on consumers' brand attitudes and behavioral intentions.

The authors provide the first empirical attempt that (1) explicitly differentiates between consumers' stereotypical perceptions of countries and stereotypical perceptions of brands from these countries, (2) empirically examines the transfer of stereotypical dimensions of different targets (i.e. country to brand), (3) explores boundary conditions for such transfer and (4) simultaneously considers the impact of both kinds of stereotypes on managerially relevant consumer outcomes.

Research has started exploring how brand heritage perceptions affect people. However, little attention has been paid to the underlying mechanisms and the link between brand heritage and relational outcomes. This study aims to integrate research on brand heritage with the stereotype-content model (SCM) to offer a novel explanation of why and when consumers identify with heritage brands.

Two quasi-experimental studies with consumers in Germany (N = 312 and N = 300) focus on multiple real brands to test the mediating roles of warmth and competence. Given the central role of anthropomorphism in brand applications of the SCM, two corresponding variables are examined as moderators, one relating to the brand (brand anthropomorphism) and the other relating to the individual (a person’s feeling of loneliness). Category involvement, state anxiety, brand familiarity, past orientation and consumer age are included as controls.

The findings indicate that warmth and competence mediate the brand heritage consumer–brand identification relationship. In addition, they highlight the moderating role of brand anthropomorphism and loneliness.

This study offers a novel process explanation for how brand heritage perceptions influence consumer–brand relationships, contingent upon loneliness and anthropomorphism.

The findings help marketers better understand how and when warmth and competence transmit positive brand heritage effects, resulting in more favorable responses.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is among the first to adopt a stereotype-content and anthropomorphic perspective on consumer responses to brand heritage perceptions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how consumer attitudes are affected by corporate brands that have newly adopted a sustainable brand image. Specifically, this paper examines consumer responses to ad–brand incongruity and tests whether two-sided messages yield greater acceptance of incongruence.

In total, 528 responses were collected via an online experiment using a 3×2 between-subjects factorial design which manipulated three levels of perceived ad–brand congruence (congruent, moderately incongruent and extremely incongruent) and two levels of message sidedness (one- and two-sided).

Results indicate that brand managers have to be careful not to create ad–brand incongruence after adopting new brand values and should avoid two-sided messages during this period.

This paper tests the use of two-sided messages as resolution hints for ad–brand incongruence and furthers the corporate branding literature incorporating sustainability.

The main purposes of this article are twofold: (1) to investigate the unexplored connections among destination gender personality, destination stereotypes, brand attachment and destination brand love and (2) to examine the moderating role of destination involvement in the association between destination stereotypes and destination brand attachment (DBA).

The conceptual model is evaluated using qualitative methods (i.e. three focus groups, six academic experts and a pilot study). In addition, using an empirical study with 610 international travelers who visited Egypt selected by systematic random sampling, 8 hypotheses were analyzed and tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) by AMOS 23, confirmatory factor analyses and exploratory factor analyses.

The study’s results suggest that destination gender plays a vital role in enhancing stereotypes, stereotypes positively affect attachment and DBA positively affects destination brand love. Finally, the results show that destination involvement moderates the dual influence of the warmth and competence of stereotypes on destination attachment.

The research supports the contention that social perception mechanisms are crucial in destination brand perception. It offers new understandings of the association between customers' destination brand perceptions and their responses to destinations.

This paper contributes to the travel literature by analyzing a novel model of destination gender personality, stereotypes, DBA and destination brand love using both social role (SR) theory and a stereotype content model (SCM). Besides attempting this task, it explores the moderating role of destination involvement in the association between stereotypes and destination attachment using the elaboration likelihood model.

The dominant paradigm in international branding research treats perceived brand globalness (PBG) and localness (PBL) as attributes algebraically participating in brand assessment and disregards the perception of brands as humanlike entities actively embedded in consumers’ social environments. Challenging this view and drawing from stereotype theory, the purpose of this paper is to suggest that PBG/PBL trigger the categorization of products under the superordinate mental categories of global/local brands which carry distinct stereotypical content. Such content transfers to every individual product for which category membership is established and shapes brand responses.

One experimental study (Study1, n=134) tests the process of global/local brand stereotype formation, identification and content transfer. Subsequently, two consumer surveys test the impact of brand stereotypes on brand approach/avoidance tendencies (Study2, n=328) and consumer–brand relationships (Study3, n=273). Data were analyzed with experimental techniques and structural equation modeling.

The findings suggest that upon categorization under the global or local brand class, individual brands are charged with the stereotypical content of the class. Global brands are predominantly stereotyped as competent while local brands are predominantly stereotyped as warm. Localness-induced warmth has uniformly positive effects, whereas globalness-induced competence acts as a double-edged sword which can both help and harm the brand.

This research contributes by proposing a novel conceptualization of global and local brands as groups of intentional marketplace agents stereotyped along their intentions and abilities, empirically establishing the process through which individual brands are assigned stereotypical judgments and demonstrating how these judgments impact critical brand outcomes and consumer–brand relationships.

Despite considerable investigations of the various outcomes of perceived brand globalness (PBG), the concept itself remains ambiguous, demanding further conceptual refinement. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to global branding literature by suggesting an extended conceptualization of PBG, and empirically testing a corresponding extended model of global brand effects, relative to the conventional operationalization.

An empirical study (n=907) involving 63 brands across eight different product categories provides new insights into the composition of global brand effects by explicitly discriminating between different facets of consumers’ brand globalness perceptions (i.e. perceived market reach (PMR), perceived standardization (PST) and global consumer culture positioning (GCCP)).

The results clearly show that effects associated with global brands are not exclusively positive. While PMR and GCCP have positive effects on consumers’ brand evaluations and attitudes, PST has a strong negative effect on the same outcomes. These effects apply to both domestic and foreign global brands and occur irrespective of the perceived level of risk associated with a given product category.

The results provide managers a clearer picture of the up- and downsides of brand globalness perceptions and urge future studies on global brands to incorporate constructs that account for facets beyond a brand’s market reach to capture the phenomenon holistically.

The purpose of this study is to investigate hybrid brand positioning strategies for emerging market brands based on two positioning elements: brand country-of-origin (COO) and brand globalness.

Researchers conducted two studies. In Study 1, a survey of 128 brand managers of emerging market brands were used to examine whether asymmetric positioning strategies improve brand preference more than symmetric strategies, and if so, which type of asymmetric strategies improves brand preference more. In Study 2, a consumer experiment in the USA was conducted to identify the positioning strategy for emerging market brands that improve brand preference the most.

For emerging market brands, at any given value of COO or global elements, asymmetric strategies outperform symmetric strategies in terms of brand preference. On average, the best hybrid positioning strategy is the one that highlights brand COO and de-emphasizes brand globalness.

A large body of branding literature examines COO and globalness separately without considering their co-presence in the same brand positioning strategy. Few studies that examine the joint influence of brand COO and globalness focus on established brands from developed markets and do not examine whether highlighting both brand COO and global elements equally is an effective positioning strategy for emerging market brands. This study introduces a framework to systematically examine the various combinations of COO and global elements in a brand’s positioning strategies for emerging market brands. By conducting two studies, the authors empirically test the influence of various combinations of COO and global elements on brand preference for emerging market brands from both firm and consumer perspectives.

This study aims to integrate research on multimodal congruency with the stereotype-content model to offer a novel explanation of why and when consumers respond favorably to vision-sound congruency in online service settings.

A mixed methods approach included a field study (360° panoramic desktop-virtual tour of a winery) and a laboratory study (fully immersive virtual realtiy (VR) tour of a pub). The explanatory mechanism was tested through conditional process analyses, specifically, a custom-made serial mediation model where effects of cross-modal congruency were channeled through telepresence and warmth/competence with familiarity with the service provider included as a moderator. Category knowledge and involvement were included as controls. Study 2 additionally accounted for sensory olfactory and haptic information present in the consumer’s physical location.

Congruency between vision and sound positively influences consumer intention to visit the environment in person, to purchase online and to engage in positive word-of-mouth. These effects are channeled through enhanced feelings of telepresence as well as more favorable perceptions of service provider warmth. Congruency effects are robust in the presence of additional sensory input in the offline environment and across levels of involvement and knowledge but may depend on a consumer’s familiarity with the setting.

The study offers a novel process explanation for how cross-modal congruency in online service settings influences consumer intention. Examining two specific sensory modalities and two service settings presents limitations.

The findings help service providers to better understand how perceptions of warmth and competence transmit cross-modal congruency effects, resulting in more favorable responses.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is among the first to adopt a stereotype-content and multimodal congruency perspective on consumer response to online service settings.