Consumer Animosity: An Introduction
Consumer Animosity (CA) is an interesting behaviour that consumers exhibit. It is a reaction to a foreign governments actions. Resulting in the consumers showing their displeasure by not buying, boycotting or protesting companies, brands or products from that country.
An example of consumer animosity is the ‘no Japan’ campaign in South Korea (Hyun-ju, 2019). With an online community forming called ‘nono Japan’ (Yeon-soo, 2019). Where Korean consumers reacted to the Japanese Government removing South Korea from its ‘white list’ of preferred trading partners (McCurry, 2019) due to this, South Korean exports of various industries was negatively effected. This opened up long held tensions originating from the Second World War and before during Japans occupation of the Korean Peninsula (McCurry, 2015).
An interesting side effect of this CA was how companies that were not Japanese, but were perceived as Japanese were target of boycotts. This included 7-Eleven, which in South Korea is entirely owned by local franchisees in the country leading to panic by shareholders trying to explain that the ‘Korea Seven’ is a South Korean brand licened by 7-Eleven in the United States (Jang, 2019). This example shows how perception of firms is as important a consideration as the actual Country of Origin (COO).
This is a fascinating area of study within marketing, more specifically within that field, consumer behaviour. Due to its nature of looking at consumer attitudes relating to other countries. CA is often falsely called consumer ethnocentrism (CE). Which is a separate consumer behaviour. CE is a consumer behaviour around the preference for domestic goods/services. With the level of preference being how ‘hard’ the CE is. Hard CE is a firm preference for domestic goods. In constrast ‘soft CE’ is not that strong and thus having little effect on that consumers buying behaviour.
An example of CE is looking at food products, if they feature flags of the country that the food originated from they are appealing to the COO of the product to imply quality. In addition to highlighting to domestic consumers who have a hard preference that this is the product for them.
Works Cited
Hyun-ju, Ock. “[Feature] Koreans reject ‘No Japan’ campaign, focus on criticizing Abe.” The Korea Herald, 12 August 2019, https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190812000777. Accessed 30 March 2024.
Jang, Lina. “7-Eleven Korea Denies Being a Japanese Brand.” Korea Bizwire, 5 August 2019, http://koreabizwire.com/7-eleven-korea-denies-being-a-japanese-brand/141791. Accessed 30 March 2024.
McCurry, Justin. “Battleship island — a symbol of Japan’s progress or reminder of its dark history?” The Guardian, 3 July 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/battleship-island-a-symbol-of-japans-progress-or-reminder-of-its-dark-history. Accessed 30 March 2024.
McCurry, Justin. “South Korean boycott of Japanese goods hits beer and carmakers.” The Guardian, 4 September 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/04/south-korea-boycott-japanese-goods-beer-car-sales. Accessed 30 March 2024.
Yeon-soo, Kwak. “‘Boycott Japan’ becomes more intense, sophisticated.” Wikipedia, 18 07 2019, https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2023/12/129_272533.html. Accessed 30 March 2024.
