Elicitation of salient brand emotions in Western and East Asian markets: The role of elicitation context

Abstract

The objective of this article is to show the effects of the use of Free Association Technique on the elicitation of brand emotions and functional associations across a Western and an East Asian culture as well as to identify and test underlying mechanisms. The use of Western techniques for eliciting brand emotions may prove challenging for marketers in East Asian markets because of the different styles of thinking and feeling of consumers in the West versus East Asia. This investigation focuses on the role of visual context (individual vs social), in which brands are presented when eliciting brand associations in the West and in East Asia. The study shows that elicitation context significantly influences the type of brand emotions and functional associations across two distinct cultures: Norway and Thailand. Consumers’ self-construal and thinking style mediate the effects of culture, as interdependent self-construal and holistic thinking explain more context-dependent brand emotions generated by Thai than Norwegian consumers. This research has important implications for studying and managing brand associations and emotions across markets. The traditional view of brands as possessing abstract, stable associations, and emotions should be reconsidered in the East Asian cultural context. Marketing managers should adapt established Western elicitation techniques to the characteristics of East Asian consumers to increase their validity.