The determinants of consumer's willingness to boycott surrogate product / Muhamad Fahmi Sahruddin

Market globalization has brought the product worldwide around the world. Globalization brings more opportunities but at the same time have its own challenges and threats when the companies decide to venture into new markets. One of the ways for the consumers to punish or demonstrate their anger toward companies that have committed negative actions is by boycotting their products. Consumers could substitute with other products that have direct or indirect link with the target boycott, which is known as surrogate products if in the event where the boycotted products are not available in the marketplace, (Friedman, 1985) which in fact surrogate boycotts are even more widespread and have become the most public type of boycotts adopted by consumers (Balabanis,2013;Friedman,2001). This research was conducted to examine the key factors that predict consumers' willingness to take part in boycotting surrogate products (Muhamad and Mizerski, 2010). We adopted the geopolitical imperative perspective of consumer behaviors (Wilson, 2014), where negative global events would have affected consumers' norms, values and belief systems (Zakaria and Abdul-Talib, 2010), thus influencing their purchase decisions. Eventually, to express their frustration, consumers choose to boycott products from the offending country (Ettenson and Klein, 2005). Specifically, this research wanted to examine the link among animosity, subjective norms and product judgments on consumers' willingness to boycott the surrogate products in a Malaysian context. In a multi-cultural society, there may be different emotions, concerns and reactions toward the call for boycotts of the products that have direct and indirect links with Israel. It is crucial for marketers, managers and multinational companies to understand the factors and willingness to purchase or boycott the surrogate products in a multi-cultural and multi-religious country like Malaysia to help them prepare their strategic action.