How does cultural tightness-looseness affect attitudes toward a local vs foreign brand transgression?

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to examine how cultural tightness at the national level and individual level influences consumer attitudes toward a brand's wrongdoing depending on the brand's country of origin and severity of the transgression. Design/methodology/approach Employing data from two tight-culture countries (China and South Korea) and a loose-culture country (the USA), two experiments were conducted to examine the proposed hypotheses. Findings The authors found that although consumers across cultures universally punish strong (vs weak) transgressions more severely, consumers in a tight-culture country, China, are more forgiving of a local (vs foreign) brand in both strong and weak transgression conditions, and forgiveness is higher for the strong transgression. Moreover, this buffering effect observed for Chinese consumers is stronger for those with high personal cultural tightness in the strong transgression condition. However, it emerges only in the weak transgression condition for South Korea, another tight-culture country. As hypothesized, no buffering effect for a local brand was found in a loose-culture country, the USA. Consumers from a loose culture assess transgression severity independently, and the punishment is harsher for strong transgressions than for weak transgressions. Originality/value This study fills a research gap by revealing that consumers from tight (vs loose) cultures would react differently to brands following a transgression depending on the brand's country of origin. It provides implications by examining how national-level and individual-level cultural tightness jointly affect post-transgression attitudes. It also presents a more nuanced perspective that the local brand's buffering effect is contingent on the degree of tightness and severity of transgression, even in similar culturally tight countries.