The influence of national identity activation on consumer responses to patriotic Ads : Caucasian vs. Asian Americans

Abstract

This dissertation study examined how the activation of national identity influences consumer evaluations of ads using patriotic appeals. Specifically, this study proposed that (1) priming of national identity through the cues within media-context would activate consumers’ national identity, making it momentarily salient, and this increased national identity salience, in turn, would affect consumer responses to the ads using patriotic themes; and (2) the impact of national identity salience on evaluations of patriotic ads among ethnic minority consumers (i.e., Asian Americans) would be different from that among majority consumers (i.e., Caucasian Americans). As expected, findings from this study showed that activating consumers’ national identity through a national identity prime (i.e., a news story about a national event) led to favorable responses to the ads featuring patriotic themes. Further, results of this study indicated that the effect of national identity salience on increasing evaluations of ads using patriotic themes was significantly stronger for ethnic minority consumers than was for majority consumers.