Marketing Seminar（2019-02）

Topic: Boycott and Demand Spillovers Related to Country-of-Origin: The Automobile Market in China

Speaker: Qi Sun, College of Business, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics

Time: Wednesday, 20 March, 13:30-15:00

Location: Room 217, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract:

We study a nationwide boycott of Japanese products in China in 2012 triggered by a territorial dispute and heavily influenced by historical animosity between citizens of the two countries. In contrast to prior research, which only examines the impact of boycotts on products from the boycotted country, we investigate the impact of boycotts on products from the boycotted, home, and other non-boycotted foreign countries. We also study the roles of consumer animosity, consumer product evaluation, and advertising effectiveness during the boycott. We implement our empirical analysis using a detailed data of monthly automobile sales in four major cities in China during 2012 and 2013. The analysis shows that the boycott reduced the market share of Japanese vehicle brands, while increasing the share of vehicles from China and other non-boycotted foreign countries, and such effects are stronger in the city of Nanjing where consumer animosity toward Japan is stronger. Moreover, we show that the boycott effects for vehicles from Japan were independent from consumer product evaluation, but vehicles from both China and non-boycotted foreign countries with more favorable consumer evaluations benefitted more during the boycott. Finally, we find that, during the boycott, parent-brand-level advertising effectiveness declined (increased) by a greater amount for vehicles from Japan (China and non-boycotted foreign countries) than the sub-brand-level advertising.

Introduction:

Prof. Qi Sun is an associate professor of Marketing atCollege of Business, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. His research focuses on Empirical Industrial Organization, Quantitative Marketing, and Applied Econometrics. He got his Ph.D. and M.A. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and B.A. from Peking University.

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