Postscript: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Consumer Animosity

It has been over 20 years since “Us versus them, or us versus everyone?” was published in the Journal of International Business (Klein 2002). The paper was the second published test of the animosity model of foreign product purchase. The model posits that the willingness to buy foreign products is affected by antipathy related to previous or ongoing military, economic, or geopolitical events directed toward current or former enemies. The first animosity study was conducted in Nanjing China, where the Japanese army killed approximately 300,000 civilians in December 1937 and January 1938. The study found that nearly 60 years later, consumers in Nanjing who were still angry at Japan because of the massacre were less willing to buy Japanese goods—and owned fewer Japanese products—even though they believed Japanese goods were of high quality (Klein et al. 1998).