The Impact of Accessible Identities on the Evaluation of Global versus Local Products

Through three studies, we investigated the impact of consumers’ global versus local identities on the evaluation of global products (products with the same specifications and packaging for consumers from around the world) versus local products (products with specifications and packaging tailored for local markets). The results show that consumers with an accessible global identity prefer a global (more than a local) product and consumers with an accessible local identity prefer a local (more than a global) product. Of note, this effect was reversed, either by an explicit instruction about accessible identities being nondiagnostic (study 1) or implicitly by inducing a differentiative (vs. integrative) processing mode (study 2).