Consumer Animosity to Foreign Product Purchase: Evidence from Korean Export to China

Purpose - This paper examines how the consumer animosity of partner country influences the purchase of foreign products. We analyzed news sentiment to determine whether Chinese consumer’s animosity affect the purchase of the products made in Korea around the time when the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile system was deployed in South Korea. Design/methodology - To measure the tone of Chinese consumer animosity more carefully, we utilized a text mining technique of the Chinese language to read the public’s opinion. Using Chinese news paper’s editorials of 2015.1-2018.10, we analyzed the sentiment toward Korea and regressed it with Korean export to China. Findings - Empirical results report that Chinese consumers tended to reduce their purchase of consumer goods from Korea when the animosity increased, that is, the sentiments of Chinese news editorials were negative. In contrast, the animosity did not affect the purchase of Korean intermediates or raw materials. We further analyzed the effect by dividing the animosity into three categories; politics, economics, and culture. Among these groups, political news exhibits a unique effect on Chinese purchase on consumer goods from Korea. Originality/value - Existing literature on animosity models has measured the animosity by collecting the consumers’ opinions through survey at a given time point, whereas it is measured by analyzing the tone of the press release by sentiment analysis during the time period around the event occurrence in this study.