Consumer dispositions: meanings and non-meanings of outgroup favourability

Global brands play an important role for consumers with a preference for goods from places other than their own countries (outgroup disposition). Scholars have studied the phenomenon and proposed a variety of constructs describing outgroup dispositions; however, it is difficult to distinguish these constructs when analysed separately, and practitioners have used them indistinctively. This research contributes to disentangling such a plurality of conceptualisations by deeply analysing four of those constructs. They were conceptually differentiated, had their scales empirically validated in a cross-cultural empirical study (emphasising their discriminancy), and some nomological networks were then proposed. Susceptibility to Global Consumer Culture has its variability explained (directly or indirectly) by Consumer Cosmopolitanism, Openness and Desire to Emulate Global Consumer Culture, and Global Citizenship through Global Brands. Managers of a brand positioned as global should use the outgroup dispositions to identify its target in a precise manner and thus enhance the brand's perception by either promoting the unification of people around the world or showing the brand's role as an ambassador of plurality between people.