Brand, Identity and Reputation: Exploring, Creating New Realities ...

The Relationship between Religiously Motivated Consumer Boycotts and Global Brand Image
Ibrahim Abosag, Manchester Business School, U.K.
Boycotting as a forced anti-consumption behavior has been occurring for decades. Boycotting according to Friedman
(1999), John and Klein (2003), and Klein et al. (2004) often occurs when people deem a firm (micro-boycotting) or a
country‘s (macro-boycotting) act to be egregious. At the macro-boycotting level, studies have generally tackled the
different types of animosity caused by a political (e.g. Ettenson and Klein, 2005; Amine, 2008), economic (e.g. Shin,
2001, Ang et al., 2001), or military (e.g. Klein, 2002, Nijssen and Douglas, 2004) egregious act. Despite an expanding
research interest in understanding animosity, there appears to be a scarcity in studies addressing religious animosity.
Religious animosity and its boycotting campaigns have proved to be significantly damaging to international companies.
The ongoing boycotting campaign against the Danish dairy group Arla Foods (FA) is a part of the religious animosity
that grew within the Muslim community (Riefler and Diamantopoulos, 2007) as a result of the publication by ―Jyllands
Posten‖, an independent Danish newspaper, of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad in September 2005. The
boycott of AF started early in 2006 and within the first five days of the boycott, the company lost over sixty percent of
its market share (Abosag, 2009). Despite the Fatwa (religious statement that should be obeyed) issued by the
International Support of the Prophet Conference in Bahrain exempting AF from the boycott, AF has still been unable to
recover its market share in Saudi Arabia, where it has its production facilities.
This paper combines different streams of literature on animosity, ethnocentrism (e.g. Klein et al., 1998; Rose et al.,
2009), consumer boycotting (Friedman, 1999; Klein et al., 2004), brand image (Keller, 1993; Martinez et al., 2008),
product judgement (e.g. Hui and Zhou, 2002) and customer loyalty (e.g. Zeithaml et al., 1996), and proposes a
theoretical framework including hypotheses fully supported by relevant theories based on the gaps and justifications
from the extant literature. The structural model proposed is empirically tested on the boycott of AF in Saudi Arabia. The
details of the research study, including the research instrument, the research setting and the data collection, are
discussed in the section following the hypotheses. Subsequently, we present the results and discuss their implications
both for researchers and practitioners.
Consumer Religious Animosity and Ethnocentrism: Consumer animosity refers to anger reactions related to previous or
ongoing political, military, economic, or diplomatic events that affect consumers‘ purchase behavior (Klein et al., 1998).
In order to understand the differences between different types of animosity, one must think of these animosities in
relation to the core beliefs held by consumers. At the very heart of an individual‘s core belief system is a basic
assumption upon which their views on the realities of life are formed. This is the epicenter of a person‘s belief system
and is where religious animosity develops. What makes boycotting triggered by an egregious act against a religion so
effective and long-lasting is that it attacks the core belief of consumers.
While established country-of-origin studies generally presume a direct relationship between consumers‘ product
judgments and purchase behavior, the animosity model suggests that consumer animosity can affect buying behavior
directly and independently of product judgment (Wilkie and Pessemier, 1973; Green and Srinivasan, 1990). The
literature shows a correlation between consumer animosity and consumer ethnocentrism (Klein et al., 1998). However,
other studies show consumer animosity and ethnocentrism as distinct constructs (Klein and Ettenson, 1999).
Ethnocentric consumers typically avoid buying foreign products. During boycotting campaigns that are triggered by
religious animosity, ethnocentric consumers are likely to develop a high level of religious animosity and participate in
the boycott.
Brand Image, Product Judgment and Customer Loyalty: Literature on the subject suggests that brands from the
boycotted country will be negatively impacted as consumers will hold a more negative image of the brand (Smith and
Cooper-Martin, 1997). Also, literature has shown sufficient evidence that global brands can have a big impact on
product perception and judgment (Leclerc, Schmitt and Dube, 1994) and on customer loyalty (Zeithaml et al., 1996).
The literature on the subject supports the propositions that both country of manufacture and brand image are important
factors in consumer evaluations of product quality (Aaker, 1997). We expect brand image to influence product
judgement and loyalty positively even during boycotting campaigns.
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