Impact of brand personality and consumer ethnocentrism in China's sportswear market

Purpose - This study aims to investigate the effect of brand personality and consumer ethnocentrism on perceived quality and purchase intentions in China's sportswear market. Design/methodology/approach - In order to examine and compare the effect of brand personality and consumer ethnocentrism on the evaluation of product quality and purchase intention toward domestic and foreign brands, COB (the country with which the brand or firm is associated) and COM (the country in which final production takes place) cues were used in this study. Chinese college students represented the sample of 385 respondents. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate the causal relationships among brand personality, consumer ethnocentrism, perceived quality, and purchase intention. Findings - Results revealed that brand personality has a significant effect on Chinese consumers' product quality perceptions and purchase intentions toward both domestic and foreign brands. Furthermore, it is found that Chinese consumers' ethnocentric tendencies have no significant impact on their intentions to buy either domestic or foreign sportswear brands. However, ethnocentric Chinese consumers do positively evaluate the quality of domestic brands when domestic brands are also made domestically and negatively evaluate the quality of foreign brands when foreign brands are also manufactured non-domestically. Originality/value - The study contributes theoretically and empirically to research on the effects of brand image and consumer ethnocentrism in emerging markets. The findings from this study will help domestic and international marketers have a better understanding of the role of brand personality and consumer ethnocentric tendencies in influencing young Chinese consumers' product evaluation and purchase intentions. In addition, few studies have simultaneously examined the effects of brand image and consumer ethnocentrism (moderated by COO) on consumers' product evaluations and purchase intentions, which provided new research and managerial implications.