Paper Title
Rising Individualism in China and its Impact on Japanese Brands

Abstract
Recent literature indicates that China is undergoing a dramatic transformation to a society that embraces individualism and materialism as a result of economic growth and modernization (Hamamura and Xu 2015; Chen and Ren 2016; Yan 2010). Studies also confirm that rising individualism and declining collectivism in China has led to changing consumer behavior (Wei and Yu, 2012; Han and Guo 2018). Particularly, Han and Guo (2018) found that individualistic consumers in China tend to show less ethnocentrism and greater cosmopolitanism toward foreign brands.Thus, one would expect that such consumers in China show less hostility toward Japanese brands. Our study is designed to investigate how consumer individualism (CIND) affects consumer choice for Japanese brands. We also investigate how consumer cosmopolitanism (COS) and consumer animosity (CA) mediate the effects of CINDon brand choices. Specifically, our study tests the following hypotheses: H1: Individualistic consumers show favorable attitudes and great purchase intentions for Japanese brands. H2: CA mediates the effects of CIND in H1. Individualistic consumers show favorable attitudes and great purchase intentions for Japanese brands because they exhibit weak animosity toward Japan. H3: COS mediates the effects of CIND in H1. Individualistic consumers show favorable attitudes and great purchase intentions for Japanese brands because they hold strong COS values. On-line surveys were conducted with samples of 473 Chinese consumers in Shandong Province. We examined their attitudes and purchase intentions for four Japanese brands – Sony and Toshiba for laptops and Canon and Nikon for cameras. We carried out a path analysis to test relationships among consumer CIND, COS, CA, brand attitudes, purchase intentions. Our findings confirm that individualistic consumers show favorable attitudes and great purchase intentions for Japanese brands (H1). More notably, our bootstrapping estimates with phantom variables suggest that COS and CA each mediate the effects of CIND on brand attitudes and purchase intentions (H2 and H3). In addition, CIND affects brand attitudes and purchase intentions only indirectly through COS and CA. The above findings suggest that individualistic consumers in China show favorable attitudes and greater purchase intentions for Japanese brands because they are more cosmopolitan and less antagonistic towards Japan. Another implication of our findings is that consumer values in emerging Asia can change over time and, specifically, future consumers in China and perhaps other Asian countries as well may be less hostile against Japanese brands as they become more individualistic and cosmopolitan. Keywords - Individualism, Consumer Cosmopolitanism, Consumer Animosity, China.