Our Brand or Their Brand? Consumers' Responses to Negative Consumer-Generated Product Reviews Regarding Domestic versus Foreign Brands

Abstract

With the growth of Web 2.0 technologies, more and more consumers share product-related information with many other consumers on various web platforms, such as product review websites (e.g., epinions.com), brand websites (e.g., dell.com), retailer websites (e.g., amazon.com), and social media. However, the question of how credible such product information is has arisen. On the Internet, the anonymous nature of consumer product reviews makes it difficult for consumers to evaluate review quality and credibility. Due to the lack of assurance of product review veracity, consumers often depend on cues to evaluate the review content accurately. One of such cues is the valence of the review: either positive or negative. Between these two valences, negative reviews have been known to be more attention getting and diagnostic than positive reviews. Thus, this study only focused on negative reviews. Another cue can be the consensus level of the review (i.e., the degree to which other consumers agree with the product opinion of the reviewer). Finally, consumers may consult the brand origin of the target brand in product reviews (either domestic or foreign brand). To date, however, little research has focused on the role of consumer ethnocentrism on brand evaluations in the context of online product reviews, despite today's consumers often being exposed to both domestic and foreign brand product reviews in a globalized economy where major firms have multiple international branches. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine how different cues influence consumers' responses to negative online reviews about domestic and foreign brands. Toward that end, this study explores how a consumer's personality trait (level of ethno-centrism) interacts with brand origin and a property of the medium (consensus information) to influence his or her brand attitude. To test the proposed hypotheses, a 2 (Brand origin: domestic versus foreign) x 2 (Consumers' ethnocentrism: high versus low) x 2 (Consensus level: high versus low) between-subjects experiment was used. As experimental stimuli, four fictitious online retailing web pages including product reviews about a laptop computer (negative review of a domestic brand with high consensus, negative review of a domestic brand with low consensus, negative review of a foreign brand with high consensus, and negative review of a foreign brand with low consensus) were created. An Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was run to test the hypothesized relationships with prior attitude toward target brand and participants' interest in buying a laptop as covariates. The results showed that there was a significant two-way interaction effect between brand origin and consumer ethno-centrism on attitude change. Consistent with predictions, when consumers' ethnocentrism levels were high, consumers exposed to the negative review of the foreign brand exhibited significantly greater attitude change than did those exposed to the negative review of the domestic brand in a less favorable way. In contrast, when consumers' ethnocentrism levels were low, no difference appeared between the negative review of the domestic brand and the negative review of the foreign brand in attitude change. When exposed to the negative review, attitude toward the brand was degraded for less ethnocentric consumers regardless of brand origin. Further, three-way interaction effects among brand origin, consumer ethnocentrism, and consensus level on attitude change were found. Under high-consensus condition, a negative review of the foreign brand led highly ethnocentric consumers' brand attitudes to deteriorate, compared to a negative review of the domestic brand. Contrarily, for less ethnocentric consumers, however, there was no difference between the negative review of the domestic brand and the negative review of the foreign brand in attitude change. Under low-consensus condition, there was no difference between highly and less ethnocentric consumers in attitude change. The findings of this study suggest that the detrimental effect of negative reviews can be buffered under some circumstances. Consumers with prior attitudes toward brands tend to resist negative review of their favored brands even under high-consensus conditions. Practically, this finding implies the importance of retaining existing consumers who already have prior attitudes toward the brand. Additionally, the findings of this study suggest that consensus information, as a heuristic cue, serves as a useful indicator of review credibility. Review web sites can help consumers' product judgments by providing consensus information. Lastly, this study used real brand names rather than fictitious brand names. Since this study takes into account consumers' pre-existing beliefs and attitudes, its findings are applicable more easily to real-market situations than are findings regarding fictitious brand names.