School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
China Non-Public Economy Research Base, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China.
PLoS One. 2019 May 23;14(5):e0216866. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0216866. eCollection 2019.
Chinese consumers' craze about imported products, especially foods and drugs, peaked after various safety incidents, such as the contamination of Chinese dairy products. Recently, this boom has gradually receded because of the constant quality problems of imported products and the stricter safety supervision of domestic products. Researchers have measured consumer's perception toward domestic and imported products in various ways. In the current research, we investigated whether the country-of-origin stereotype has weakened in Chinese young consumers at the neurological level. By using a word-pair paradigm, 21 young participants were required to classify positive or negative words while event-related potentials were recorded. The results showed that reaction time to identify negative words following presentation of imported products (imported-negative condition) was longer than domestic products (domestic-negative condition). The amplitudes of N270 and LPP evoked in the imported-negative condition were significantly larger than those in the domestic-negative condition, possibly reflecting the higher expectation conflict when participate identified the adjectives as negative primed by imported healthy-related products. These findings revealed that young Chinese consumers still evaluated imported products better than domestic products.
中国消费者对进口产品（尤其是食品和药品）的狂热在一系列安全事件后达到顶峰，如中国乳制品污染事件。最近，由于进口产品不断出现质量问题和国内产品安全监管更加严格，这种热潮逐渐消退。研究人员已经通过各种方式衡量了消费者对国内和进口产品的看法。在当前的研究中，我们调查了在神经水平上，中国年轻消费者对原产国的刻板印象是否已经减弱。通过使用词对范式，要求 21 名年轻参与者在记录事件相关电位的同时对积极或消极的词进行分类。结果表明，在呈现进口产品（进口负条件）后识别负面词汇的反应时间长于呈现国产产品（国产负条件）。在进口负条件下诱发的 N270 和 LPP 的振幅明显大于国产负条件，这可能反映了参与者在识别作为进口健康相关产品负启动的形容词时的期望冲突更高。这些发现表明，中国年轻消费者仍然对进口产品的评价高于国产产品。
