Abstract In recent years, the product harm crises have occurred more frequently, causing great loss to the company in the aspects of the brand equity, market share and financial performance. Prior research suggested that the consumer-brand relationship could weaken the negative effect of the product harm crisis in some extent. This paper aims to explore how the eastern collectivist consumer-brand ethnocentrism influences the evaluation of the brand in product harm crisis. In two studies, with the samples from China and South Korea, the we found the consumer ethnocentrism does not always maintain the favor for the domestic brand, but the severity of the product harm crisis moderates the effect of the consumer ethnocentrism on domestic brand evaluation. In particular, it is theorized and found that, when the product harm crisis is trivial, the negative emotion and brand-evaluation to the domestic brand is lower than the foreign brand; but when the product harm crisis is severe, consumers respond to the domestic brand with stronger negative emotion and lower brand evaluation. These findings offer some managerial implications for the management of product harm crisis and the development of national brands.
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