The effectiveness of comparative advertising in the US automobile market influenced by consumer ethnocentrism, industry-specific personal characteristics, and foreign versus domestic brand ownership

Comparative advertising is a common promotional tactic used by automobile marketers in the USA for many decades. Comparative advertising either directly mentions a competing brand by name in a comparison favorable to the sponsor of that advertisement, or indirectly implies a competing brand by referring to the competitive group of brands without naming one in particular. Much like comparative advertising, consumer ethnocentrism is inherently adversarial because ethnocentric consumers consider domestic products superior to competing brands produced in another country. Consumer ethnocentrism materializes in the form of cognitive, affective, and conative personal characteristics that can influence purchase decisions. It also represents a consumer’s concern about the economic well-being of his or her fellow citizens. Comparative advertising can exert a significant influence on the formation of ethnocentric responses at the moment of exposure to the ad content. The purpose of this study is to test the effectiveness of direct and indirect comparative advertising featuring domestic versus foreign automobile brands among US consumers when the influence of consumer ethnocentrism, personal characteristics that connect respondents to the US automobile industry, and foreign versus domestic automobile brand ownership are simultaneously considered in a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) model.