Consumer Response to Patriotic Ads for Domestic Versus Foreign Brands in Contexts of International Sporting Events: The Role of National Identity Activation and Group Emotion

Abstract

An individual possesses multiple social identities, and different identities are temporarily salient at different points in time. A particular social identity, such as national identity (NI), may have little or no impact on consumer response unless that identity is activated. This study explores how NI activated through different contexts of international sporting events and associated group-based emotions (happiness vs. anger) would exert differential influence on consumers’ responses to patriotic ads. Further, this study proposes that this effect would vary depending on the corporate origin of the brand, which refers to whether the advertised brand is domestic or foreign. Findings show that (1) while both happiness and anger improve consumer responses to patriotic ads, such an effect is significantly stronger in the happiness-eliciting context, and (2) while NI activation in the happiness-eliciting context has an effect on increasing consumers’ responses to patriotic ads regardless of the corporate origin of the brands, the effect of activating NI is greater for a domestic (vs. foreign) brand in the anger-eliciting context. This study contributes to extending previous findings by applying two important variables—contexts of activating NI that elicit specific group-based emotions and a corporate origin of the brand—that influence consumer response to a patriotic ad.