This study's primary aim is to explain Urban Adult Chinese Consumers' preference between foreign and Chinese products. It examines how Country of Origin (COO), Consumer Ethnocentrism (CE) and Consumer Animosity (CA) influence Urban Adult Chinese Consumers' product preference and willingness to buy. The existing knowledge is divided on this issue. By reviewing the relevant literature, it is clear that there are two completely different approaches of investigating the impact of COO on Chinese consumers. The researcher of this current study classified the two opposing methods as 'the simplistic approach' and 'the cautious approach'. Studies follow 'the simplistic approach' firmly believe Chinese consumers overwhelmingly evaluate foreign products positively and they have a strong preference for foreign products. Research follows 'the cautious approach' argues that Chinese consumers' complexity and internal differences cannot be ignored, some of them prefer Chinese products and they cannot be simply considered as in favour of foreign products. Past studies all concluded that Chinese consumers hold low to moderate level of CE beliefs. However, two investigations concluded Chinese consumers harbour strong animosity towards the Japanese. This study follows the philosophical understanding of pragmatism. The research questions are the most important factors that determine the research strategy and quantitative and qualitative methods can complement each other to address the research problem. This study employs a concurrent embedded mixed methods research strategy that consists of a street survey and semi-structured interviews. Due to the distribution pattern of the quantitative data, this study used non-parametric analysis methods including: Chi-Square Test for Independence, Spearman's Rank Order Correlations, Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis Test. The qualitative section of the investigation focuses on four issues: how Urban Adult Chinese Consumers (UACC) determine whether a product is foreign or Chinese, sources and background of animosity, the impact of domestic alternatives and areas for Chinese products to improve. This study discovered that UACC's preference between foreign and Chinese products remain divided. They cannot be simply considered overwhelmingly in favour of foreign products or prefer Chinese products. For those UACC have a preference for foreign products, quality and design are the main two reasons. Desire to support China's domestic industry and patriotism are the main driving forces behind some UACC's preference of Chinese products. UACC holds low to moderate level of CE beliefs, which suggests they are worldminded consumers that capable of evaluate foreign products based on merits, without strong negative bias. UACC have strong animosity towards the Japanese, but antagonistic sentiments towards the Americans and French are relatively low. There are complex sources of animosity and this study identified a wide range of factors that contributed to UACC's strong animosity towards the Japanese. The main area of original contribution of this study concentrates on Consumer Animosity. It discovered a wide range of sources of animosity towards the Japanese and constructed an enhanced animosity model.

Revenant incessamment au cœur de l’actualité, la question du made in suscite l’intérêt du monde académique depuis plusieurs décennies. Pourtant, la mondialisation et les pratiques commerciales favorisent un environnement de consommation peu propice à une prise en compte volontaire de cette information. En décalage avec cette réalité, de nombreux travaux s’inscrivent encore dans le cadre du paradigme d’un individu rationnel et des modèles cognitifs de traitement délibéré de l’information. L’objectif de cette recherche est de contribuer à une meilleure connaissance des effets du made in dans un contexte de consommation plus naturel.Notre revue critique de la littérature illustre la prédominance d’approches avant tout cognitives, malgré l’apparition d’éléments de nature affective à l’origine de débats invitant à un changement de paradigme. Prenant la mesure de l’importance d’un affect chronique associé au pays d’origine, nous nous appuyons sur le modèle de contenu des stéréotypes et sur la théorie des niveaux de représentation pour développer nos hypothèses de recherche, mettant en exergue les effets combinés des associations affectives et cognitives avec le pays, ses produits ou ses ressortissants, sur l’évaluation du produit par les consommateurs.Nous présentons ensuite nos choix expérimentaux, procédons aux contrôles des données collectées, puis rapportons les tests de nos hypothèses et les résultats de nos analyses. Ceux-ci révèlent des effets directs mais aussi indirects de l’affect pays chronique sur les évaluations des produits. Ces effets diffèrent selon la perception par les consommateurs des ressortissants du pays d’origine, et selon leur perception des produits. / As the economy or politics face new challenges, the question of the origin of products often surfaces in the media and becomes a focus of attention. For several decades, academics have studied the effects of origin on consumers’ attitudes towards products. However, globalization and commercial practices contribute to generating an environment unfavorable to full awareness of such information. This leads to a gap between reality and many research studies, still subscribing to the paradigm of a fully rational individual and to cognitive models of deliberate information processing. The objective of this research is to reach a better understanding of how made-in effects occur in a more natural consumption context.We first conduct a critical literature review highlighting prevailing approaches of an essentially cognitive nature, in spite of the emergence of affective elements sparking debates on a paradigm shift. This leads us to recognize the importance of a chronic country-related affect associated to a product’s country of origin. Building on the stereotype content model and the construal level theory, we develop our research hypotheses on the combined effects of affective and cognitive associations to this country, its products and its nationals, on consumers’ evaluations of the product.We then detail our experimental design, proceed to preliminary controls of collected data, and present the tests of our hypotheses and our main results. They reveal both direct and indirect effects of chronic country-related affect on the evaluations of products. These effects differ depending on consumers’ perceptions of the nationals and of the products from the country of origin.