A product’s association with a foreign origin may not always be positive due to the ethnocentrism of local consumers and the animosity toward a specific country. Shimp and Sharma(1987) found that higher ethnocentrism among consumers were predictably related to both a preference for domestic goods and an aversion toward imports. Klein et al. (1998) tested an animosity model of consumer perception of foreign products in China. They find that that animosity toward a foreign nation will affect negatively the purchase of products from that country independently of judgments of product quality. Some scholars have found that social milieu concerning the consumption of brands is in a state of flux and that rapid social changes, a common occurrence in many developing markets such as China, may bring some surprises to the evaluation of a brand by consumers (Eckhardt &Houston,2002). Cultural values such as nationalism and trust often interact with each other to affect brand perceptions in emerging markets.In addition, as Francis et al. (2002) have found, Chinese brand names have more positive
connotations associated with them than do English
brand names.