National Stereotypes and Corporate Social Irresponsibility: The Effects of Country-of-Origin Competence and Warmth on Consumer Responses to Company Misconduct

摘要

By means of two survey-based experimental studies in Italy, we investigate the effects of national stereotypes of competence and warmth evoked by a company's country of origin on consumer attributions of blame and evaluative responses toward the company's products, when the company is deemed accountable for misconduct, and we investigate how consumer ethnocentrism, animosity, and product category characteristics moderate the hypothesized country-of-origin effects. Country-of-origin competence leads to a more favorable consumer attitude toward the wrongdoing company's products. This effect increases when the company sells high-involvement products or utilitarian products. Country-of-origin warmth leads to more favorable consumer attitudes toward the wrongdoing company's products directly and also indirectly through diminishing consumer attributions of blame toward the wrongdoing company. These effects increase when consumers are highly ethnocentric, or the animosity towards the country of origin is high.