Antecedents to Adoption of Global Brands: Empirical Evidence from India and Malaysia

Abstract

The present research aims to evaluate the suggested framework in the adoption of global brands exhibited by Indian and Malaysian consumers by integrating the concepts of brand equity and attitude. Based on the Aaker and Keller's conceptualization of brand equity and innovation diffusion theory, a list of potential facilitators of global brands adoption were derived from the literature review and the suitability of these facilitators were tested by conducting in depth qualitative interviews. Furthermore, in order to test the proposed conceptual model on a large scale a survey was conducted and a structured questionnaire was used for data collection. Data obtained was factor analyzed to determine the key dimensions that facilitate global brands adoption and discriminant analysis was performed in order to identify the factors that are sufficient to discriminate between adopters and non-adopters. Results reveal that brand awareness and result demonstrability are the key dimensions that sufficiently discriminate between adopters and non-adopters of global brands irrespective of the level of involvement that consumers' assign to the product category in both the nations.