Preventing brand name blunders in doing business across cultures: Theory and research

This paper contributes to international business literature by integrating firms’ product competition, consumers’ brand congruence, and contextual enculturation into one framework of analysis. The authors propose and empirically demonstrate how the effectiveness of international branding strategy can be scaled by ethnolinguistic (in)consistency (EL(i)C). The study compares domestic vs. foreign brand assessments on the connection of productbrand fit and brand relevance congruence with their respective ethnolinguistic context in two dissimilar cultures in Asia. The findings offer practical implications for international business managerial actions. This study provides evidence that brand value starts from a firm’s offering, is cocreated through consumers’ congruence process, and is enhanced by enculturation conformance or diminished by nonconformance within a given context of market culture. The empirical evidence of this study supports our proposition that the “enculturation determinant logic” per context be integrated with “competitive advantage” logic of firms and “service dominant logic” of market.

Preventing brand name blunders in doing business across cultures: Theory and research

David W Pan a, Alan J Pan b*, Berna Mutlu cand David Rylander a

a College of Business, Texas Woman ’s University, Denton, TX, USA; b Computer Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China; c Warrington College of Business Administration, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes to international business literature by

inte-grating firms’ product competition, consumers’ brand congruence,

and contextual enculturation into one framework of analysis The

authors propose and empirically demonstrate how the e

ffective-ness of international branding strategy can be scaled by

ethnolin-guistic (in)consistency (EL(i)C) The study compares domestic vs.

foreign brand assessments on the connection of product-brand fit

and brand relevance congruence with their respective

ethnolin-guistic context in two dissimilar cultures in Asia The findings offer

practical implications for international business managerial

actions This study provides evidence that brand value starts

from a firm’s offering, is co-created through consumers’

congru-ence process, and is enhanced by enculturation conformance or

diminished by non-conformance within a given context of market

culture The empirical evidence of this study supports our

proposi-tion that the “enculturation determinant logic” per context be

integrated with “competitive advantage” logic of firms and

“ser-vice dominant logic ” of market.

KEYWORDS

Comparative product assessment; brand congruence; enculturation determinant logic; ethno- linguistic consistency; consumer behavior

关键词

比较产品评估; 品牌一致 性; 文化决定逻辑；文化与 语言一致性; 消费者行为

CORRESPONDENCE TO David W Pan dpan@twu.edu

* Now at Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.

https://doi.org/10.1080/21639159.2019.1622435

2008; Samiee, Shimp, & Sharma,2005) The disparity in such brand assessment acrosscultures is, in part, due to the different context determinacy and confinement ofconsumers in their respective nations (Pan, et al 2015) People often take for granted

culture-related issues in context as a constant, resulting in insufficient information forassessing a brand.

Woodside (2014, 2016) has advocated for “a major shift in research from tional directional predictions to somewhat precise outcome testing (SPOT) with com-plexity theory and contrarian case analysis for business phenomena we all face inmultiple realities” that in our understanding are, in essence, superimposed with oneanother (Italics added) Woodside (2017) suggests that the current mainstream toolsrelying on somewhat linearity (italic added) analyses with null hypothesis statisticaltesting (NHST) at a p < 05 level in social science and business research are too nạveand insufficient (italic added) to reflect truth in a multiple-layered real world We agreewith his assessment and astute observation as our studies support that the superimposedreal world should be scaled by a better way of reasoning with comparative clarity in oursuperimposed mind (Pan & Pan, 2017) This paper takes a deductive approach by (1)dissecting business process from its basic elements, (2) modeling a dyadic structure ofentanglement in brand establishment and development, and (3) empirically analyzingthe comparative data from two different cultural contexts The result suggests that the

conven-“enculturation determinant logic” derived from a brand prominence analysis model (e

g Pan & Pan,2017) be integrated with the“competitive advantage” logic (Porter,1985)from his structural analysis of industries and the “service-dominant logic” (Vargo &Lusch, 2004) evolved from brand “association” (e.g Keller,1993), because the encul-turation determinant logic underlies both proportionally in a compensatory equilibriumfor a successful business

Products offered across cultures often invite regrettable pitfalls in their initial ness endeavor, particularly in the product naming process in another language and/orhost culture The Coca-Cola Company’s narrative (2014) provides a classic example ofhow its Chinese name, “bite the wax tadpole,” was later changed to “drink tasty anddrink happy,” proximately close to their phonetic annunciation in Chinese but with anew meaning in the host culture, different from that of its home culture Best Buy, anAmerican retailing giant for electronics and home appliance is branded in English andits marketplace to etymologically encourage a speedy purchase for best value propor-tionate to product functionality and quality However, Best Buy’s phonetically

busi-American Best Buy’s Store Name in Chinese

Typographic Format

Chinese Car’s Logo

in Brazil Auto Show in 2006

Figure 1.Product naming blunders across cultures

equivalent in Chinese serves just the opposite When transliterated back into English, itrefers to purchase after hundreds of thoughtful deliberations (i.e.“buy after hundreds ofthinking”) As Best Buy’s CEO has indicated to stay in China (Lee,2013), it would bewise to rebrand its store name in Chinese characters in addition to the firm’s opera-tional considerations A Chinese carmaker made a similarly embarrassing blunder at anauto show in Sao Paulo (Southern Sea Net, 2006) The car was named as “CHANA,”derived from “CHANGAN” (Eternal Peace) and CHINA (origin of manufacturer),thought as an ideal product trademark in English linguistic-based global market But

it became a big joke overnight among Brazilian consumers who attended the showbecause CHANA and XANA (female genitalia) are homonyms in Portuguese Theinappropriate moniker was such incongruent with the local ethnolinguistic context

Thus, we adopt a three-prong premise on which “firms compete over products, sumers conceive and identify with brands, and enculturation defines business” (cp accul-turation defines international business) (e.g Pan, Fu, Young, & Pan,2016; Pan, Pan, Clarke,

con-& Multu, 2015) The enculturation process defines and confines how a product takes amental location within people’s knowledge and experience κ in their home culture; and theacculturation process transcends a comparative foreign product or person to be adaptedinto a guest or host culture We use a conceptual comparative assessment model integratingproduct competition and brand congruence by enculturation/acculturation conformance toformulate a holistic approach This allows us to empirically illustrate how consumersrespond to the paired primers of local versus international brands in the same industry intwo different cultures This paper contributes to international business literature by inte-grating firms’ product competition, consumers’ brand congruence, and contextual encul-turation into one framework of analysis as, respectively, presented below To highlight ourcontributions, we have additionally proved that the host cultural conformance be determin-able in scaling both product competition and brand congruence in consumer assessment

We are offering an analytic tool with practical implications for international brand ment as well as for business management in general

manage-Conceptual foundation

Product competition

Firms compete over products primarily in two directions: differentiation for distinction

or imitation for similarity (Pan & Pan,2017) Leadingfirms often rely on strategies tohave their product be different from others, but preferred by consumers This oftenindicates a deliberate planning process to balance tasks entangled in two aspects;distinctive product development and brand association (Keller,1993)

Firms trailing behind, on the other hand, often want to either unseat or follow theleaders in the competitive marketplace Their strategies range from differentiation toimitation While differentiation requires time, innovation, and creativity with highlyrisky investment, imitation often is a quick and much less expensive alternative toleverage a market leader’s established position Some offer a product in a less similarway of mimicking (e.g Elmer-DeWitt, 2015), while others, in a more similar way ofcopycatting (e.g Two Pesos, 1992) A few even go much further in blatantly

counterfeiting from manufacturing to retailing (ad idem, International TrademarkAssociation,2015) To maintain the established product distinction forfirms’ competi-tiveness, the improvement of tacitness, complexity, and specificity in a firm’s skills andresources can raise barriers to imitation (Reed & Defillippi,1990).

Product (P) is what a firm offers to be merchandisable in a marketplace A firmdesigns and/or produces P according to structural specifications and arrangement inform (trademark), content (substantiveness) within P and its relation with others forintended benefits P thus takes a modality Pmodalityas follows

Pmodality ¼ ðPsubstantiveness þ PtrademarkÞ (1)where P is expressed by Psubstantivenessin attributes, features, and utilities in a structuralrelationship with Ptrademarkin name, logo, and alike with a legally protectable meaningfrom being imitated in marketplace (Figure 2)

Product Positioning is a placement of marketable Pmodality for differentiation orsimilarity in relation with others by which an intended impression is created in the

Figure 2.Product defined

Note: In Figure 2, CO n represents a company o ffering a product P i as P modality for intended bene fits in marketplace;

P modality contains substantiveness in structure with attributes, utilities, features and trademark (form) with name, logo, alike, in a three-dimensional illustration using a dotted circle to symbolize its malleability No brand location can be established in consumer mind yet because P modality has not got merchandized and known to a consumer Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.

mind of consumers Pmodality, when being positioned and further comparatively oped in relation with others, is expressed as follows (Figure 3):

devel-χ ¼ f Product Competition or ProductExtensionð Þ=X (2)

Brand congruence

As illustrated inFigure 4, only when Pmodalityis offered in trade, communicated to, andperceived by consumers does Ptrademark get recognized and Psubstantiveness get experi-enced in a probability to form a brand (B) Pmodalityis thus transcended by congruenceprocess γ to become a B and occupy a place in the repertoire of knowledge andexperience (κ) of consumers Ptrademarkby its representation of Psubstantiveness is, there-fore, a referent inκ (κreferent) to occupy a mental location withinκ

In brand congruence processγ, P, through similarity categorization (Rosch & Mervis,

1975; Tversky, 1977), attempts to be placed, though often misplaced or misaligned indistance (Pan et al.,2016) from its intended B, for brand establishment and developmentwithin an individual This process is two-layered:

Competition or Extension

Development for Upgrade

← Differentiation for Distinction

Imitation for Similarity →

Derivative for Extension →

0 -

Product Comparativeness(X)

Figure 3.Product development or competition

Note: Figure 3 represents a dynamic competition relationship between C n O n and C 1 O n in a given industry C 1 O n represents an o ffering by a company of originality or authenticity with an established leading position at the marketplace; its further development can be achieved by upgrading the product, or releasing its extensions, in all directions of both P substantiveness and P trademark , represented in the dotted lines C n O n represents other companies ’

o ffering P 2 in competition by taking a pathway of either di fferentiation for distinction or imitation for similarity on both

P substantiveness and P trademark , also in all directions represented in the dotted lines It depends on the nature of a given industry and adopted competitive strategy, competing o fferings can be, to some extent, fungible on their product attributes, utilities, or features in P substantiveness , or di fferent on their product name, logo, or a like in P trademark , Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.

(1) Specific-Aimed Brand (SAB) fit (a.k.a “perceived brand fit” by Park, Milberg, &Lawson, 1991, or a “classical logical” layer by Aerts, 2009) It is mostly in thetangible level of product functionality sought by consumers, and

(2) General context Brand (GEEB) consistency (a.k.a., the “quantum conceptualinterference” layer by Aerts, 2009) It is superimposed with SAB fit and addi-tionally in the ethnolinguistic level of enculturalized consumers dictates brandestablishment and development (e.g., Pan et al 2016, Pan & Pan, 2017)

Pmodality is therefore through brand congruence γ transcended into Bi that is tioned for SAB fit in κ with one’s demand by affordability, want, and need (κDAWN),and for GEEB consistency with one’s value, identity, and belief systems (κVIBS) AsκVIBS

appor-is an“umbrella” or general layer covering and superimposing specific layers of κDAWN

as one entanglement structure for humans of social being, often in a quantum manner(i.e |0〉 and |1〉) κVIBSdictates and modifies the nature and range of individuals’ action,

or inaction ofκDAWNinγ, for often being insensitive to product functionality itself

To illustrate, when people are asked if they would havefish (P) as their meal choice,many will respond affirmatively, a seemingly good SAB fit between what is offered

Psubstantivenes(i.e.fish) and what is preferred for acceptance in one’s κDAWN(i.e need afood, want to havefish, within the affordability by many people) When being furtherprompted with how about a“pet fish” meal, most people who responded affirmatively,would most likely change to reject because of the additional layer of information beingsomeone’s “pet.” Although Psubstantivenescould still remain the same, being“pet” invokes

a GEEB inconsistency with their κVIBS that dictates and modifies consumer responses

Figure 4.Brand congruence

Note: Figure 4 illustrates a brand congruence process in which how an o ffered P i by a company can be approximately transcended into its intended B i in a dyadic entanglement structure (i.e SAB fit with κ DAWN and/or GEEB consistence with κ VIBS ) in the consumer ’s mind Again, only after P modality gets merchandized and known to a consumer, a brand location can be established in consumer mind, thus rendering the primed product going through a comparison with that or those established similar product brands on both P substantiveness and P trademark by both κ DAWN and κ VIBS in a compensatory equilibrium fashion for similarity distance in assessment The Bi of an individual consumer is always smaller than intended marketable Pi because the brand in prominence ( ω) is a sum of Bi in a viable marketplace Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.

toward a primer In the same vein, the sales on Amazon of novelty toilet papersfeaturing the headshot photos or previous tweets by publicly elected persons in theUnited States also demonstrate this dyadic entanglement function orthogonally in themarketplace The toilet papers are marketed with a concomitant primer at a quantumlayer of GEEB consistency or inconsistency which is usually absent or weak in a staplegood Depending on the determinacy of polarized enculturation in κ (Ptoilet_paper ≌

κvibs), some are sold out much faster than others (Reilly,2017)

As an individual’s cognitive result is part of collective κ, a particular brand accumulated(∑B) among many individuals is a brand of prominence in the marketplace in a givenculture Any product can achieve its wide range of brand prominence as long as it taps into

a suitable layer of SABfit or GEEB consistency with others that is commonly shared Forexample, a high number of viewable commercials in social media is created by Key OpinionLeaders (KOLs) whose kVIBSresonates with that of many others inγ, or the apparel models

in fashion industry exhibit with a part of kDAWN that can be commonly shared on aspectrum ranging from prettiness to beauty of personality and style inγ In the similar vein,the luxury product becomes brand prominence because its GEEB consistency with somedeterminants in shared kVIBSis above and beyond the basic functionality of individualizedSABfit with κdawninγ, not because of its additional degree of Pmodalitydistinction inχ This

is because the latter is often highly fungible or imitable in product competition

For an illustration, we let B be oneκmodalityin the mind of consumers as it should becongruently reflective of or approximately congruent (≌) with Pmodality as an offering

by afirm minus a distance in assessing competing ones in the comparative assessment

κmodality in the mind of consumers is in one direction transcended from Pmodality asoffered by a firm that is appropriated through κreferent It is on the other modified anddictated from partial to full alignment with an individual’s dyadic-layered cognitive k.The latter is cultivated through enculturation to host the nature and limit the range ofthe assessors’ ratings in the comparative brand evaluation of γ (Figure 4)

Enculturation conformance

Enculturation is generally established and developed through accumulative learning ofκ in aculture It is the process of enculturation conformanceΨ over time in a given culture (Zi),acculturation conformanceψnin others (Zn) It also determines and confines a given Pmodalitythat is transcended into κmodality per brand congruence relevancy On enculturation con-formance, we adopt the concept of emic–etic dichotomy in cultural anthropology by Pike(1967) The emic account of conformance is uniquely reserved to an assessor self The eticaccount is that commonly shared with others, from a third party’s viewpoint The emic-eticaccount of enculturation is on an elliptic plane that is relative in a temporal and processivemanner Both accounts are defined and confined within a culture, embedded with subjectiveand objective information, and transformable by content and nature between accounts due tothe essence of mathematic elliptic plane law as our referenced dial This distinction isimportant because the nature of the etic-emic account is relative to consumer κ from apoint of time in procession regardless of being objective or subjective

This study applies a chaotic dynamic system theory (Devaney,2003) to view that sumers are highly interactive and sensitive to the GEEB environment, while marketers havefocused on SAB strategies by taking the cultural-linguistic context monolithically (i.e so-

con-called one-fit-all global strategies) for granted Applying this generally asymmetric andnonlinear proposition, we can see that doing business across cultures is highly dynamicdue to (1) preconditioned GEEB’s context that defines consumers of different cultures, (2)evolved SAB’s goals chased by firms that would be inevitably fungible with competingproducts in a given market, and (3) contextual axis that is periodically orbiting to adjustthe interactions between consumers and products in an ever mutually adapting manner (e.g.the respective, seemingly rotational trend of globalization or anti-globalization, a.k.a., natio-nalistic protectionism), such as reflected in the process of enculturation or acculturation, anddepicted in different supply–demand curves across cultures As a result, an offering will haveeither a large impact in marketplace, a limited market of fandom, or irrelevance to encultur-alized consumers (e.g the “Buy America Act” or the similar in other nations), effectivelyprompting for a GEEB consistency (e.g national identity) with the consumers’ VIBS.

Brand prominence

Brand prominence ω is thus defined by the congruity function (f) of product (P)relative to κ of consumers as determined and confined in conformance with a givenenculturation (Z) A successful product has established brand prominence inκ relative

to and within optimal conformance of enculturation

ω ¼f P : kð Þ

A brand B in prominenceω is therefore determined through P’s positioning χ by productextension or competition (X-axis) through brand congruenceγ for its establishment anddevelopment (Y-axis) in an optimal enculturation conformance ψ of suitable culturalmakeup (Z-axis).χ and γ are thus defined and further confined by ψ in terms of relativeproduct position in distinction or similarity, brand space location in distance on con-gruence, and suitability in extent offirms’ offerings vis-à-vis acceptance or rejection byconsumer enculturation conformance in the marketplace (Pan & Pan,2017)

We see no brand prominence without a given market’s receptive and furtheracceptable enculturation determinacy We are at odds with an established construct

of brand prominence to reflect the conspicuousness of a brand’s mark or logo on aproduct to signalize status with luxury goods (Han, Nunes, & Drèze,2010) We redefinebrand prominence as being to accumulate (∑B) for its collective κ on a commonlyshared account of enculturation on the basis of fact sufficiency with our modeling

The above conceptual knowledge is the key to formulate proper strategies in ducting business in a competitive setting Brand has represented product on manyaspects, including its equity (e.g Keller & Lehmann,2006; Oliveira, Rovedder, Silveira,

con-& Luce,2015), the effects of phonetic symbolism such as articulation ease, length, andmovement on brand name preference or design (e.g Lowrey & Shrum, 2007;Topolinski, 2017; Topolinski, Zürn, & Schneider,2015), image (e.g Alwi, Faridah, &Kitchen, 2014; Whan, Jaworski, & Maclnnis, 1986), signs (e.g Le Roux, Bobrie, &Thébault, 2015), association (e.g Keller, 1993), and loyalty (e.g Dawes, Meyer-Waarden, & Driesener, 2015; Johnson,1984) without a precise identity of its location

Brand can also be examined by our conceptual and integrated framework through threeprimary perspectives One refers to the design and creation of a product/company’sidentity on its related form, modality, semiotics, and utilities– a firm-based approach ofproduct competition The second refers to consumers’ subjective and intangible assess-ment or experience of the former on their affective, cognitive, or behavioral dimensions– a customer-based approach of brand congruence And the third refers to how bothcompeting products and primed consumers would interact through enculturationconformance, by which a dominant account would control in a comparative cross-culture setting Consumers conceive and identify with brands that (1) derive fromfirms’product offerings in a competitive industry, (2) take a mental space in the assessors’mind, and (3) are defined and confined by enculturation or acculturation conformance

of marketplace When the product becomes a brand, it is malleable in a given context ofculture (Pan & Pan,2017) Brand function is, therefore, a congruence process in which

a product transcends thefirm’s intent into consumers at a given marketplace, subject todeterminacy and confinement in the context of culture

Culture refers to a context of shared general conduct and thinking process thatpeople have developed in a given location, group, or organization Culture further refersto: (1) an integrated pattern of knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon thecapacity for symbolic thought and social learning, and (2) the set of shared attitudes,values, goals, practices, and languages that characterizes a group, organization, institu-tion, nation, or geopolitical entity Again, the enculturation process defines and

Figure 5.Brand in Prominence by Enculturation

Note: Figure 5 illustrates our framework in two dimensions in which how enculturation is the determinant logic to explain and integrate both product competition and brand congruence by its dominant etic or emic account of conformance requirement in three dimensions where both product and brand are malleable by enculturation conformance due to the market ’s determinacy and confinement by a given culture Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.

confines how a product takes a mental location within people’s κ in their home culture;and the acculturation process transcends a comparative foreign product or person to beadapted into a guest or host culture.

When cultural factors, inclusive of ethnological and linguistic ones, are invariant in ahome culture, consumers unequivocally rely on their own cultural knowledge andlinguistic ability to select a product from competition and attach meaning to it as abrand in their mind Douglas and Craig (2011) suggest that international businessresearch should shift to the knowledge of dynamic interactions between firms andcustomers across global exchange system to understand the nuances of convergenceand divergence of local, regional, and global markets To be effective in another culture,product branding strategies should adaptively converge with the host ethnolinguisticcontext characterizing that market

Studies related to ethnolinguistic issues or ethnocentrism in business across cultureshave long been conducted (e.g Berch, Adler, & Oliver,1987; Mehrabian,1992), but theconceptual understanding with empirical support is still advancing (e.g Feuer,Baumbach, & Woodside, 2016) As economies become further globally intertwined,and the interest of individual businesses is deemed to be mutually“excluded” from oneanother (i.e Brexit, or the trend of nationalistic protectionism), products in one nationare seeking for a market of another, often making head-on competition against locals(analogously applicable on the issue of migrants in another culture as well) The needfor better knowledge of how to conduct cross-cultural business in branding drives thisstudy

Purpose of study

The purpose of the present study consists: (1) to identify the structure and diversity ofunderlying factors that dictate the assessment of product-brand functionality to varyingdegrees of similarity,fit, or consistency in a comparative setting, (2) to examine whetherthe differences for competing assessments are explainable by the congruity frameworkfor their connection with the primers per enculturation or acculturation context, and(3) to assess whether the identified underlying factors vary by the selected demographicand behavioral variables for formulating suitable business strategies across cultures.The adopted framework is the grounding for the following propositions and hypoth-eses to assess the effectiveness of international branding strategy They are as follows:

Proposition 1: Brand function is an arrangement of mental spaces that are malleable in

“distance” by a range of similarity assessments between the primers offered in viewingand the primed in the mind of assessors The assessment is defined by a probabilitydistribution, subject to a set of factors underlying the conceptual reasoning or refer-enced framing

H1: The more dissimilar the primed competing assessments are, the more diversifiedthe underlying factors for conceptual reasoning or referenced framing will be withinknowledge and experience limitations

As brand is a location in consumer mind having a malleable distance,“shape,” and

“size” relative to one another, subject to a primed one in comparison with theestablished one, the farther between the two in assessment, the more diversified reasonsare called up to form its evaluative underlying reasoning or framework

Proposition 2: The identified underlying factors are a collection of independent randomvariables (i.e constructs or fields) in the mind of assessors corresponding to variousconnections by congruence with a given product and brand function, being pliable anddeterminable by pertinentκ of the consumers per sociocultural context

H2: The more similar between the identified underlying factors on κ per context, thebetter accountability in explaining the connection of brand congruence per productfunctionality or per cultural relevance

As an assessment is exogenous in nature, its underlying factors can be used toexplain the relationship in brand congruence between primed product functionalityand brand relevance, both being pliable and determinable by pertinent k of the con-sumers per their conformance requirement in a sociocultural context

Proposition 3: The differences in assessment for the congruence connection, beingsegmented, can manifest the mirror-imaged differences through the selected demo-graphic-behavioral variables

H3: The better segmentation of demographic-behavioral variables is, being eitherascribed biologically or inscribed from enculturation, the better evidential basis forformulating informed business segmentation strategies across cultures

As an assessment manifests a characteristic of assessors, those of similar istics should be grouped by segmentation analysis to detect where there are significantdifferences in their primed assessments in a context

character-Method

Research design

The study proposes brand meaning as being dependent on κ per local context.Therefore, we hypothesize international brands to be more independent of κ in aguest culture than in their home one because it starts anew in a different context.Our study was a design of 2 (nations) x 2 (competing product-to-brand assess-ments) x 2 (brand-product functionality by contextual relevance) in a 3-step analy-sis The first step was to inquire the underlying factors dictating the assessment ofproduct-brand functionalityfit and brand relevance consistency in two paired sets ofdomestic-generic and foreign brand primers The second was to exam the effect ofbrand-product ethnolinguistic congruence on the underlying factors of assessmentfor conceptual reasoning or referenced framing The third was to reveal if therewere demographic-behavioral differences as manifested by main or interaction

effects on the assessments The aforementioned were conducted in IT industry forcomparative assessments of brand primers between two sets of tangible goods

offerings for a price (i.e computers) as in Study 1, and intangible services for nofee (i.e information search) (Clark, Rajaratnam, & Smith, 1996) as in Study 2,respectively Both studies were designed for the same assessment in comparisonbetween two nations

Participants

University students from two distinct non-native English ethnolinguistic cultures wererecruited One has a phonetic and letter-based language (e.g Turkish, n = 126), and theother is ideographic based with pictographic characters (e.g Chinese, n = 275)

Instrument

The questionnaire was initially developed in English as it was the native language ofmany international brands from North America, and native/working language of theauthors The Chinese version was translated into Chinese pictographic characters bythe author of native Chinese language speaker The primed brands in a twin set were

in English as being marketed in Turkey as verified by the author of native Turkishspeaker To ensure the questions in both versions were conveying the comparablemeaning in a cross-cultural context, the commonly acceptable procedure of reversedtranslation was used (Aaker & Williams, 1998; Harry & Triandis, 1985) The cross-validation was also conducted by bilingual native speakers with doctoral degrees inresearch and linguistics granted by Carnegie Classification research IA universities inAmerica The entire study has evolved from the conceptualization of theoreticalperspectives, research design, and data collection, to completion of manuscripts inseveral versions over recent 4–5 years

in factor analysis

Procedure and data

After the initial informed consent, participants viewed paired brand name/logo primers,followed by questions in a series of section blocks They are product-brand, brand-perception, brand-culture, and brand-language compatibility, respectively Responsesfrom 401 participants were further screened for data suitability, 242 (60.4%) question-naires were considered usable for analysis (Chinese, n = 149; Turkish, n = 93)

In Study 1, Chinese students responded to Chinese domestic “Lian-Xiang” inChinese characters that are offered as Lenovo internationally Etymologically, Lian-Xiang in Chinese has the transliterated meaning of“Associative Thinking.” Lenovo wasoriginated from the“legend” and Latin root “de novo.” Its paired competing interna-tional brand was Dell, whose Chinese character is pronounced as Dai-er, with notransliterated meaning, but for a foreign brand primer.

Turkish students responded to IBM as it has evolved into a generic term for acomputer in Turkish culture With no prominent Turkish national brand, Lenovo haskept the IBM brand in Turkey along with Lenovo products after acquiring IBM’s PCdivision Its paired competing brand was also Dell in English

In Study 2, Chinese responded to Chinese domestic “Baidu” in Chinese characters.Baidu is transliterated to mean “hundreds of times in search” in English WithinChinese culture, “Baidu” was inspired by a poem of 800 years ago The literary rootcame from“ hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly,

I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood.” Baidu thusrepresents the persistent search for an ideal answer per local context Its paired foreignbrand was Google in its Chinese characters, phonetically as “Gu-Ge,” transliterated as

“Grain’s Song” in English According to the former Google China, the Chinese namewas created to anticipate the harvest with joy in China Google has dropped the use ofits Chinese characters in China Its generic version “Google” in English is beingmaintained, but not marketed because of its exit from mainland China a few years ago.Turkish students responded to Turkish brand “Arama” in Roman letters, as beingnationally prominent for a web information search engine.“Arama” in Turkish has atransliterated meaning “to call for,” or “to find.” Its paired foreign brand was alsoGoogle All data was extracted with a further check of its completeness and validity fordata analysis

Analysis

Thefirst step of the analysis was to identify the underlying factors dictating evaluationassessments primed by selected competitive brands displayed This represented thefactor reduction through factor analyses of two sets of 12 items

The second step was to determine whether a differing ethnolinguistic effect wouldaccount for the explainability of product-brand evaluations This represented theadoption of multiple regression using the general linear model (GLM) analyses toestimate the explainability of congruence connection with brand-product functionalityand brand-culture relevancy, respectively

The third step was to determine the effect of demographic and behavioral orientationvariables on the factors identified in the first step of the analysis This represented themain and/or interaction effects among segmented groups of market characteristics onthe hypothetical congruence connections between product-brand functionality fit andbrand relevancy consistency, along with their evaluations in cross ethnolinguisticcontext prescribed in the aforementioned comparative framework

A series of Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) procedures were formed to compare main or interaction effects among segmented groups ANOVAanalyses followed to reveal the detailed results on the main and/or interaction effect of

per-the selected demographic and behavioral orientation variables on per-the factors identified.The strength of the respective effect size (η2) was reported Post hoc pair-wisedcomparison procedure was used to determine if significant differences existed betweengroups of participants for a main or interaction effect The established rejection level forall analyses was p < 05 unless being worthy for a notation otherwise.

We selected the MANOVA for comparison among segmented groups because wehave had multiple and somewhat correlated dependent variables, and we wanted to lookfor differences among treatment groups altogether in all dependent variables in thisstage of analysis We did not use a repeated measure ANOVA because that applies to asingle dependent variable with multiple measurements of it for each subject; and isapplicable to separate within- and across-subject variability within a treatment group

We also reported the standard error (SD), rather than the standard deviation (SE), ofthe sample means to provide an estimate of the sample mean from the populationmean The rationale lies within a probability distribution in the random samplingprocess While we wanted to estimate how far the sample mean for a given segmentedgroup is likely to be from the population mean, we also understood that the standarddeviation is the degree to which individuals within that group differ from the samplemean in their measurements We selected the standard error, rather than the standarddeviation, of the mean to provide a probabilistic statement about how our segmentedsample size can provide a better estimate of their population means in their respectivenations in light of the central limit theorem

Result and discussion

Underlying factors

Data were factor-analyzed to have identified two sets of underlying factors for ceptual reasoning and referenced framing in the assessment The descriptors of“brandfunctionality fit (BFF),” “brand relevance consistency (BRC),” or “brand relevanceinconsistency (BRiC)” were adopted for one set The descriptors “brand,” “product,”

con-“brand-product,” “cultural,” “linguistic,” or “ethnolinguistic,” along with “consistency,”

or “inconsistency” were variably used or combined (e.g product ethnolinguistic sistency [product ELC] or brand ethnolinguistic inconsistency [brand ELiC]) We adoptthe“ethnolinguistic” to combine both cultural and linguistic effects together, or sepa-rate them apart to differentiate from either effect individually We initially pondered theadoption of either“brand association” (Keller, 1993) or“perceived brand fit” (Park etal.,1991) as our domain label but the data manifestation called for a further distinctionbetween BFF and BRC, respectively, under the two-layered cognitive quantum structure(Aerts, 2009) We variably use domestic or foreign with BFF or BRC to denote theirrespective constructs whenever applicable (Tables 1– 4)

con-Ethno-linguistic effect

Multiple regression of general linear model (GLM) analyses were conducted to mine the explanability of the connection of brand congruence per ethnolinguistic effect