Essays on consumer animosity and misinformation as challenges for global markets

This dissertation simultaneously investigates the topics of consumer animosity and misinformation as challenges for companies operating in multiple countries. This dissertation includes five essays (two literature reviews—including one meta-analysis—, two survey studies, and experimental studies). Essay 4 aims to offer a comprehensive overview of the consumer animosity literature field by using a systematic literature review approach. In particular, Essay 4 made use of a framework-based review approach that offers informative as well as impactful insights on a certain topic. Essay 1 and Essay 3 build upon this knowledge by examining different contextual factors as moderators of animosity’s chain of effects. In particular, Essay 1 adopts a meta-analytic approach in order to assess various context settings, in which animosity is more or less harmful to businesses. Similarly, Essay 3 focuses on contextual factors that might strengthen animosity’s detrimental effects. In particular, we introduced and validated the Social Animosity Context Scale—consumers’ perceptions about their peers’ and society’s animosity toward a particular country—and investigated the Social Animosity Context Scale’s moderating role on animosity’s impact on consumers’ boycott participation. In Essay 2, we examined brand positioning strategies as an actionable instrument to overcome animosity’s adverse effects. In particular, we tested the effectiveness of a brand’s perceived globalness (PBG) to mitigate animosity’s chain of effects through a multi-country study. Essay 5 focuses on the accuracy perceptions of misinformation by adopting an inoculation-correction approach. In particular, Essay 5 contains a series of experimental studies testing how consumers can be preserved from believing misinformation and how accuracy perceptions can be resolved after misinformation exposure.