Date of Award

Summer 2008

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Program/Concentration

Business Administration-Marketing

Committee Director

Anusorn Singhapakdi

Committee Member

John B. Ford

Committee Member

Mahesh Gopinath

Committee Member

Donald McNatt

Abstract

Collective animosity and its effects on consumers' perceptions of and preferences for foreign products from the perpetrators' country of origin has received considerable attention in the marketing literature (Ettenson and Klein 2005; Klein, Ettenson and Morris 1998; Klein 2002; Nijseen and Douglas 2005). Collective animosity however is only one possible emotion that might be experienced towards other groups (Smith 1993; Smith 1999; Mackie, Devos and Smith 2000). Collective guilt is one of these possible emotions that have received considerable attention in the social psychology literature. Collective guilt refers to the distress that one might feel due to moral transgressions performed by other members of one's own country (Doosje, Branscombe, Spears and Manstead 1998; Branscombe, Slugoski, and Kappenn 2004). An issue that is relevant to marketing is how these feelings might influence consumers' perceptions of and preference for foreign products.

New suggestions are presented for extending the collective animosity model to incorporate collective guilt as a possible emotional reaction. This research also extends the collective animosity model to include a series of antecedents to collective animosity and collective guilt. It is proposed that cognitive appraisals of the transgression committed, and a person's moral and national identities will have an impact on the level of collective animosity and collective guilt experienced, and in turn these emotions will have an impact on a person's preference for foreign products.

Structural equation modeling was used to test nine main hypotheses. In total nine hundred surveys were collected divided equally among the three different experimental conditions.

This research makes several contributions. First, the theoretical conceptualization of collective animosity as an intergroup emotion provides researchers with an opportunity to examine other emotions that might be evoked in an international context. Second, this dissertation provides the first empirical test of collective guilt in the context of marketing. Third, this dissertation contributes to the literature on collective animosity and intergroup emotions by examining a variety of antecedents not examined before. Fourth, this dissertation makes a distinction between the antecedent conditions leading to collective animosity and collective guilt and the intensity of collective animosity and collective guilt.

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DOI

10.25777/veq4-ym87

ISBN

9780549928553

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