Abstract
Recently, South Korea’s decision to deploy an advanced U.S. missile defense system has drawn neighboring China’s strong protests. Amid this political tension between both countries, the purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between this specific political conflict and consumers’ purchase intention. Based on previous literature, this study suggests a research model that defines the relationship between international political conflict, country image (i.e., affective country image and cognitive country image) and purchase intention. Proposed hypotheses suggest that international political conflict between foreign firms’ host and home countries is negatively associated with consumers’ purchase intention toward foreign firms’ products in the host country by hurting cognitive and affective image of the home country. This study contributes to understanding the underlying mechanism on how international political conflict influences consumers’ purchase intentions.
Highlights
Since the establishment of South Korea-China diplomatic ties in 1992, South Korea and China have cooperated closely and made rapid development in various fields, such as tourism, trade, cultural exchange and so on
We suggest that mediating effects of cognitive image and affective image on the relationship between international political conflict and consumers’ purchase intention are different, and his study posit following hypothesis: Hypothesis 7: Affective image of foreign firms’ home country transmits a stronger effect from international political conflict between foreign firms’ host and home country to consumers’ purchase intention in the host country than does cognitive image of home country
Our research model reveals that international political conflict between foreign firms’ home country and host country can hurt home country images in the host country and further influence consumers’ purchase intention toward foreign firms’ product
Summary
Since the establishment of South Korea-China diplomatic ties in 1992, South Korea and China have cooperated closely and made rapid development in various fields, such as tourism, trade, cultural exchange and so on. In 2012, China and Japan disputed over a chain of islands known as the Diaoyu in Chinese, putting the diplomatic relations between these two countries on ice. in 2012, China and Japan disputed over a chain of islands known as the Diaoyu in Chinese, putting the diplomatic relations between these two countries on ice This was followed by China’s boycott of Japanese products due to this territorial conflict between both countries (Wang, Li, Barnes, & Ahn, 2012), which had a strong negative impact on bilateral trade, resulting in a one-year trade disruption of 2.7% (Heilmann, 2015). In this way, international political conflicts are associated with political relationships, and can influence economic and cultural activities between countries. We believe our research on the impact of political conflicts on consumers’ purchase intention would provide insights for foreign firms’ risk management when unexpected political conflicts arise between host country (or trading country) and home country, and extend our understanding about why political conflicts influence trade at the macro-economic level
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