Premium generic brand (PGB) choice vis-à-vis generic and nationalbrands: A scenario comparison for self-use, family consumption andgift giving in a food versus non-food and cross-cultural context

Chris Baumann a,b,1,n, Hamin Hamin a

a Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australiab Seoul National University (SNU), Seoul, South Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 6 January 2014Received in revised form22 March 2014Accepted 22 March 2014

Keywords:Premium generic brands (PGB)Self-useFamily consumptionGift givingCaucasian consumersChinese consumers

a b s t r a c t

Purpose: The study models factors affecting brand category choice for generic as well as national brands,and next contrasts them to a new brand category: premium generic brands (PGB). PGB are a newoccurrence in brand and product management, and consumer reactions to PGB are not yet wellunderstood.Design/methodology/approach: Three purchase motivation scenarios were presented to 553 consumers totest for their purchase intentions for self-consumption, family use or gift giving. A quasi-experiment waschosenwhere respondents were exposed to store-like presentations of actual real life products and askedfor their likelihood to choose the national or generic brand over the new PGB. The study appliedmultivariate testing such as MANOVA.Findings: Separate models were developed for food and non-food choice through backward deletionregression analyses, and the most parsimonious models revealed strong similarities for self as well asfamily consumption choices, but distinct drivers for gifts. Value for money, image and satisfaction are keyfactors in brand choice overall, but for gifts, ‘image’ overpowers all other predictors.Originality/value: The study identified the Chinese as a distinct consumer segment for brand choice sincethey are more open to potentially consider PGB as gifts, whereas Caucasians only buy national brands forgift giving.

Crown Copyright & 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

This study is grounded on the up-to-date research area on theimportance of generic brands and focuses on specific factorsaffecting customers’ intention to purchase different types ofbrands. Generic brands (or store/retailer brands; private labels)were first introduced a century ago (Raju et al., 1995), butexperienced their real ‘break through’ in the 1970s and 1980s inthe North American and some European markets (UK, Germanyand Switzerland) with evidence to suggest that approximately halfof grocery shoppers buy generic food products. The strong pene-tration of generic brands was demonstrated, for example in 35grocery categories in a Swedish study (Anselmsson et al., 2008),but also in the UK where retail brands have a market share of 28%and in the American market with 16% retail brands. Generic brandpositioning is a ‘value for money’ proposition, where the average

price difference between retail brands and national brands, forexample in the UK, is 35% (Anselmsson et al., 2008).

The evolution of brand names such as the emergence of genericbrands and their role in creating brand equity has been studied(e.g. Jon and Crittenden, 1984; Kohli et al., 2005), and researchershave also investigated retailing communication and promotionstrategies and the associated roles of generic and national brands(Ailawadi et al., 2009). A new emergence, however, perhaps asa result of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), is a new sub-categoryof generic brands, the ‘premium generic brands’ (PGB) as intro-duced by Baumann and Valentine (2010, p. 52). This brandcategory “still offers a touch of luxury, but at a much moreaffordable price”. In Australia, premium generic brands such asWoolworth Select were only recently introduced, and consumerreaction is not yet well understood.

We contribute to the literature by exploring consumer reactionto PGB and contrast such to choosing generic and national brands.Three scenarios were presented to our respondents in a quasi-experiment to probe the degree the tested three brand categorieswere attractive for (a) self use (Scenario 1), (b) for family use(Scenario 2), and (c) for gift giving (Scenario 3). Our approach is

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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2014.03.0100969-6989/Crown Copyright & 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

n Corresponding author.E-mail address: chris.baumann@mq.edu.au (C. Baumann).1 Visiting Professor.

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 21 (2014) 492–501

based on seminal work on gift-giving and personal brand andproduct use (Belk, 1982), ranging from a diverse spectrum ofdisciplines beyond marketing such as anthropology (Mauss, 1954;Sherry, 1983), economics (Belshaw, 1965; Kerton, 1971), psycho-logy (Kimel et al., 2012; Shen et al., 2011) and sociology (Caplow,1984; Hyland, 2014), indicating that brand choice driven bydistinct purchase motivation such as gift giving ‘touches’ uponmany areas of human life.

The branding literature has given only little attention topurchase motivation with the exception of a recent study thatinvestigated the effects of store image, product signatureness andquality variation in relation to private brands (Bao et al., 2011). Ourstudy picks up from this by investigating purchase motivation forgift-giving with a focus on differences across ethnic groups andadding the new dimension of the PGB. Research on gift givingitself dates back to the 1960s (namely Bussey, 1967). Bussey'sstudy was the springboard for research on gift-giving involvement(Belk, 1982), product involvement (Clarke and Belk, 1979) andsouvenir buying intentions (Kim and Littrell, 2001), but also forcultural behaviour (Qian et al., 2007). We picked up from thatstream and included cultural differences in our study since for gift-giving, purchase motivation has been found to be associated withculture (Arunthanes et al., 1994; Beatty et al., 1991).

To sum up our approach, this study links the following fourresearch dimensions:

� Premium generic brands (PGB) versus Generic and Nationalbrands: The study compares three different types of brandcategories, one of which is the latest edition to brand portfolios,the PGB. We contrast the choice of these brands in twodifferent product categories: food (chocolate biscuits) to non-food (liquid hand wash soap).

� Motives for gift giving: Our study focuses on purchase motiva-tion for the three brand categories as gifts, and we comparethat to the choice for self- and family-use.

� Gift giving and culture: We focus on gift giving and culturaldifferences and probe the notion that culture drives consumers’view on the importance of money and as such influences brandchoice. Consequently, we asked respondents about their ethnicbackground.

� Gift giving and brand choice: The study compares three ethnicgroups: Caucasians, ethnic Chinese and other Asians (mostlySouth Asian) in what type of brands they choose when theypurchase food or non-food as a gift.

2. Generic brands in context of the literature

The marketing literature provides deep insights into a variety ofbranding issues, including generic brands. Given the emergence ofgeneric brands in the 1980s, a thorough taxonomy of retailingstrategies was presented at the time (Jon and Crittenden, 1984);the strategic role of retail brands (Burt, 2000) and brand associa-tion mapping (Till et al., 2011) have also been established. Genericbrands have also been investigated along the classic marketingconstructs of profiling customers (Whelan and Davies, 2006),promotion (Manzur et al., 2011), pricing (Kurata et al., 2007),and product quality (Allenby and Rossi, 1991; Rao and Ruekert,1994).

The role of generic brands has been explored across a numberof different product categories, including industrial markets (Lowand Blois, 2002), beverages (Olsen et al., 2011), meat products(Banovic et al., 2010) and fashion (McColl and Moore, 2011). Giventhat PGBs are a relatively new occurrence, however, the literaturehas not yet established how consumers react to that mid-range

brand positioning strategy, and our study is designed to contributeto closing this gap in the literature.

In contrast, while the field of PGB is new, the literature has infact established, at least to a certain degree, how branding prefer-ences vary across cultural groups. For example Sanyal and Datta(2011) demonstrated a significant and positive association betweencountry of origin and brand equity. Brand preferences and brandchoice have also been researched for urban Chinese consumers(Kwok et al., 2006) and it has been established that the Chinese area distinct segment. However, how Chinese consumers in particularrespond to generic brands and PGB has not been investigated to ourknowledge, and this study adds to the literature on the topic ofcultural/ethnic groups and brand choice. In our subsequent reviewof the literature we concentrate our focus on the area of gift givingand cultural differences, both the foci of our study.

In the final analysis, our study hypothesises that consumerreaction depends on the purchase driver, i.e. whether a product isbought for one-self, for one's family or as a gift, and in the lattercase, as outlined in our introduction, gift giving depends onethnicity and we control for this factor in our study.

3. Motives for gift-giving

The motivations for gift-giving are well established in theliterature, dating back to 1979 (Banks, 1979). Gift-giving occasionssuch as birthdays, Christmas or weddings have been studied inrelation to money spent on the present, but also different types ofrecipients such as friends, parents and children (Banks, 1979). Thatearly work also looked at the types of gifts given such as clothing,jewellery and sporting goods that top the list. While these testswere more descriptive in nature, it fast became clear that the morecomplex area to investigate is the actual reason for gift-giving, andthat ranged from obtaining pleasure, showing friendship/love,expecting something in return and finally to giving pleasure.

Motivations for gift-giving have been linked to symbolism andthree types emerged: altruism or pro-social behaviour, compliancewith social norms, and self-interest or indebtedness engineering(Finley Wolfinbarger, 1990; Wolfinbarger and Yale, 1993). In such aframework consumers are “creative directors” in managing therelationship between those motivations and the symbolism of thegift. As such the gift can be symbolic of the self (i.e. the giver) andthe giver's perception of the receiver. In essence then, a giftsymbolises the self-image of the giver, their perception of thereceiver, and also their perception of the relationship such as thelevel of friendship or the importance of a business contact.

In one way or another, the reasons for gift-giving evolve alongthe altruistic, i.e. targeting the pleasure for the recipient, andagonistic, i.e. targeting the satisfaction of the giver, motivations(Kim and Littrell, 2001). Ultimately motivation boils down towhether the gift-giving act is driven by unselfish or then agapiclove1 where more pleasure is derived from giving rather thanreceiving. Kim and Littrell did not find a strong influence, however,for the effect of buying for oneself or for others when it comes tosouvenirs, but other categories may differ on this dimension.

There is a strong emergence of research on gift-giving. Con-sumers are expected to behave differently when choosingproducts as gifts rather than for personal use. Not only the amountspent on the product may differ, but indeed overall ‘effortexpenditures’ have been found to be higher for gifts in contrastto expenditures for personal use products (Clarke and Belk, 1979).At the same time, Heeler et al. (1979) found no significant

1 Agapic love: A secondary type of brotherly love that is altruistic and selflessand is a combination of erotic love and storgic love. (Source: http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095355293).

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difference in ‘search efforts’ for a personal gift for a close friend incontrast to the purchase of the same product for personal use.

In sum, motivation for gift-giving is threefold: experiential(i.e. carefully selecting a gift to communicate love and friendship),obligated to give a gift, and practical (i.e. choosing a gift that is usefulfor the receiver) (Finley Wolfinbarger, 1990; Wolfinbarger and Yale,1993). We now pick up from previous research with a focus onbuying for friends or buying for one-self, but we split our study intothree scenarios: consumers buy for self-use, for family-use, or then asa gift. As far as we are aware, this is the first study of this type.

3.1. Gift-giving and ethnicity

Early work in the field of gift-giving outlined in the previoussection assumed a homogenous group and as such did not test forcultural differences. However, there is emerging evidence in theliterature that in fact gift-giving is quite heavily influenced byone's ethnic background (Green and Alden, 1988; Jolibert andFernandez-Moreno, 1983; Witkowski and Yamamoto, 1991), andour study will test for such differences.

Gift-giving has been probed for differences on demographicvariables such as age, gender, income, marital status und religion(Komter and Vollebergh, 1997). It was established that there is anemotional hierarchy of different social relationships such as forfamily and friends, two dimensions we include in our study aswell. It is equally clear that gift-giving is directly related to status(Andrus et al., 1986; Parsons, 2002). The meaning of status,however, differs among cultural groups, clearly warrantingresearch into cultural, or ethnic, differences in gift-giving.

An early study exploring cultural differences in gift-givingcompared the American to the Oriental culture (Beatty et al.,1991). Their study was conducted based on the notion that culturalvalues influence attitude, and attitude influences gift-giving beha-viour (Homer and Kahle, 1988). Their study investigated perceivedgiving and effort as dependent variables to test for cultural andgender differences. Although they did allow for culture/genderinteraction effects, the study did not find substantial differencesbetween the two cultures. Perhaps this is due to the samplingframe. A student sample was used, and the 83 Oriental studentsmay simply not be different enough from the 68 Americanstudents. Students are a fairly homogenous group, whether inter-national or local, with similar life situations (e.g. young, studysituation, financial constraints, intelligent, ambitious). At the sametime, the Oriental student group was comprised of 24 Singapor-eans, 11 Japanese, 9 Malaysian, 9 Indonesian, 9 Thais, 9 from HongKong, 6 Koreans and 5 Taiwanese. While they all may be classifiedas Oriental and do have that similar life situation as students whilesampled, these eight countries – besides all being located in Asia –

have little in common. They have very different cultures, histories,languages and stages of economic development. This may alsoexplain why the study's results are not clear-cut and in partcounter-intuitive. For our study then, we have included threegroups that are more clearly distinct: Caucasians, Chinese andSouth Asian (mostly Indians).

We are not the first to look at the Chinese gift-giving behaviour.Chinese cultural values impacting such behaviour have beensummarised by Qian et al. (2007) as:

– Strong family orientation– Guanxi (i.e. Chinese networking)– Yuan (i.e. a belief in destiny)– Mianzi (i.e. the importance of maintaining ‘face’ at all times)– Renqin obligations: (i.e. reciprocal2obligations).

Qian et al. (2007) study tested the above Chinese culturaldimensions on gift-giving behaviour and found they explain34.3% of the importance of gift-giving, 22.4% of the amount-given,18.5% of brand orientation and 10.4% of gift selection efforts.The importance of cultural differences in gift-giving is alsosupported by Shanka and Handley (2011) who looked at differ-ences for an undergraduate student sample in Australia based oncountry of birth. Significant differences were generally found forthe three groups (i.e. born in Australia, in Asia and the othergroup).

We integrate cultural values in our study and test for the effectof image (or saving “face” that is important in the Chinese culture asoutlined above, but less so for Caucasians) and also the importanceof price and value for money. Tung and Baumann (2009) haveclearly demonstrated that money is significantly more important tothe Chinese than to the Caucasians, and we thus include thesedimensions in our study to allow for ethnic differences.

3.2. Gift-giving and brand choice

One might expect gift-giving to be an especially involvingpurchasing situation with a distinct consumer behaviour fromgeneral brand choice (i.e. purchases for one-self), but research inthis regard is not conclusive. Inconsistency stems from differencesin giver involvement (Belk, 1982). High involvement gift-givingsituations call for higher quality and more expensive gifts, whichalso means that the buyer/gift giver spends more time andshopping efforts, yet also within the high involvement category,there was, for example, a distinction between a birthday gift (lessexpensive gifts, less time and effort) and a wedding gift (moreexpensive gifts, more time and effort).

Brand choice may well be linked back to motivation for gift-giving, and that may not always be voluntarily, but indeed basedon an obligation, for example by a need for acceptance at work,within a family or with friends. The literature distinguishesbetween mutual obligations (e.g. birthdays) and one-sided obliga-tions (e.g. graduations, housewarmings, weddings) (Goodwinet al., 1990).When it comes to dating, relationships often includegift giving customs, for example to honor an anniversary orValentine Day. The feeling of an obligation to give a gift can alsoresult in pressure since the relationship could get strained whenfailing to honor the gift giving custom.

Ultimately, gift giving serves as a communication tool to affirmthe relationship. But the giver sometimes feels a social obligation(Goodwin et al., 1990), or indeed the obligation to purchase a giftmay be so strong that it results in a threat to freedom, elicitingpsychological reactance (Clee and Wicklund, 1980), and ultimatelythe gift giving situation turns into a negative experience.

Our study is designed to ‘capture’ the many dimensions thatemerged from our cursory review of the literature in the threemain fields, i.e. the branding literature, research on gift-giving andour attempt to link such to cultural differences, or ethnicity. Weknow from the literature that customer satisfaction is a keydimension in building customer loyalty (Baumann et al., 2005,2007) and for purchase decisions (Oliver, 1980), but of coursecustomers are also driven by price (Anderson, 1996) and relatedperception of value for money (McDougall and Levesque, 2000).The branding literature specifically tells us about the importanceof image (Gwinner and Eaton, 1999), and in this study we want toprobe for differences in brand choice for self and family use andalso gift-giving.

4. Methodology

In order to test how ‘real’ consumers respond to PGB, we didnot want to sample students or conduct a standard survey study,2 For a specific paper on reciprocity, refer to Rynning (1989).

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but instead opted for a quasi-experiment. We wanted to be asclose to the real in-store experience as possible without actuallybeing in the store. That meant that we showed pictures of thethree brands on a computer screen and that we tested forrespondents’ reactions. For that quasi-experiment we only hadsome control over the allocation of the treatment, with onlylimited random assignment of sample subjects, as is common forthat type of method.

Our respondents were exposed to those real world examples offood (chocolate biscuits) and non-food product (liquid hand washsoap) products with actual pictures of the products as consumers findthemwhen shopping at grocery stores. Fig. 1 displays the actual screenpresentations respondents were presented with when probed on thefamily use scenarios; the display of brand and product categories wasidentical for the other questions presented in Appendix A. The realworld shelf like presentation of the products constitutes an experi-ment designed as having a quasi-experimental design.

We chose chocolate biscuits and liquid hand wash soap as for bothcategories, all three brand categories (i.e. PGB, generic and a nationallybranded products) are available in stores with very comparableproducts in terms of quantity and quantity/size of the product. Thedifferences were only the packaging, and of course the price andpresumably quality, dimensions we wanted to explore in our study.

Following our quasi-experiment approach, we set up three distinctscenarios and we wanted to test how respondents ‘feel’ (reflected inpurchasing intentions) about the three brand categories for thedifferent situations. The specific questions can be found in Appendix A.

� Scenario 1: Brand category choice when a purchase is made forself-consumption.

� Scenario 2: Brand category choice when a purchase is made forfamily consumption.

� Scenario 3: Brand category choice when a purchase is made forgift giving (e.g. a gift for a close relative or a friend).

Fig. 1. Example of three scenario-based family use questions.

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To gain access to a large enough sample and to ensure thegathering of high-quality data, we tested the three scenarios usingan on-line consumer panel. Researchers have previously success-fully used the services of professional data collection agencies (seee.g. Drew and Stanford, 2001; Faber et al., 1987) and found suchconsumer panel data to be reliable, as was the case in our study.

The data were gathered on-line and the sample consisted of553 respondents in Australia. Given that the literature told us thatculture could be an important factor in gift-giving, we includedEthnicity in addition to the standard demographic variables(gender, age, income) and we asked respondents to identify theirethnic background regardless of their citizenship. This approachresulted in 378 Caucasians, 67 Ethnic Chinese and 108 Other Asian,predominantly South Asian. A sample overview can be found inTable 1. Consumers were then presented the three scenarios andasked to indicate their respective purchase intentions.

Multiple regressions were run applying the ‘backward deletion’method to arrive at the most parsimonious model per scenario,

i.e. purchase for self use, for family and gift giving. The predictorvariables tested included image, price, quality, satisfaction andvalue for money. A complete listing of the constructs with therespective questions can be found in Appendix A. The regressionanalysis was followed by another multivariate testing, theMANOVA. The focus of this analysis was to combine the dimen-sions of ethnicity and the importance of money for the threerespective groups, i.e. the Caucasians, the Chinese and the otherAsians (i.e. Indians). The MANOVA analysis was conducted solelyfor the gift giving scenario since our literature review clearlypointed towards cultural differences.

5. Discussion of results

5.1. Brand category choice across consumption scenarios

The first research question of this study is concerned with brandcategory choice for the three consumption scenarios, self-use,family use or gift. The pattern of predictors per brand categoryand consumption scenario is presented in Table 2. The predictors, orpattern of explanatory factors per brand category, is nearly identicalfor the self and family consumption scenarios for both productcategories, the food (chocolate biscuits) and non-food (the liquidhand wash soap). This also suggests that respondents do notdifferentiate between the two; they feel comfortable to use thesame products they use themselves in a family setting.

Overall, value for money and image affect most purchasescenarios and have thus been identified as key factors. Satisfactionis an important factor for self and family purchases, whereas priceis important for national brand food purchases, particularly forTim Tam, the national food brand tested in this study, whereconsumers are emotionally attached to the brand. Image isimportant for liquid hand wash since the product is presented inthe bathroom to one-self, to family and most importantly, also toguests visiting the house.

For chocolate biscuits specifically, the study found a negativeeffect of price considerations on intentions to purchase the nationalbrand for self and family consumption. Consumers’ mindset includeshigher prices for national brands, and therefore pricing is a concernwhen buying national brands, especially for self/family consumption.Based on the Homo Economicus principle, consumers’ buying inten-tions increase with lower prices such as discounts or sales promo-tion. While price considerations are important for national brandchoice, they were not significant for the choice of generic brandswhere consumers have a predisposition of generic brands beingcheap. However, consumers are concerned about quality issues sincethe mindset is of inferior quality for generic brands.

In contrast to factors affecting food brand choice, generic brandsfor non-food purchased for self and family use are significantlyaffected by both quality and price. This shows a phenomenon of a

Table 1Sample overview.

Demographic Frequency Percentage

GenderMale 306 51.0Female 294 49.0

Age18–24 years 107 17.825–34 years 118 19.735–44 years 124 20.745–54 years 113 18.855 plus 138 23.0

EthnicityCaucasian 323 53.8Chinese 66 11.0African 19 3.2South Asian 45 7.5Middle Eastern 16 2.7Other Asian 34 5.7Other 95 15.8

Annual household income before taxLess than $25,000 104 17.3$25,001–$35,000 78 13.0$35,001–$45,000 54 9.0$45,001–$55,000 51 8.5$55,001–$65,000 49 8.2$65,001–$75,000 49 8.2$75,001–$85,000 40 6.7$85,001–$95,000 29 4.8$95,001–$105,000 41 6.8$105,001–$115,000 27 4.5$115,001–$120,000 13 2.2More than 120,000 65 10.8

Table 2Brand category choice across consumption scenarios.

Dependent variables Food: chocolate biscuit Non-food: liquid hand wash

Generic brand Premium generic brand National brand Generic brand Premium generic brand National brand

Scenario 1: purchase for self use Q,S,I V,S,I V,(P),S,I Q,(P),I S,I V,SScenario 2: purchase for family V,Q,I V,S,I V,(P),S,I V,Q,(P),I P,S,I V,SScenario 3: purchase for gift giving (V),Q,I P,I S,I (V),Q,I I I

Independent variablesI¼ image P¼price Q¼qualityS¼satisfaction (i.e. customer satisfaction) V¼value for money ( )¼negative regression coefficient

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combined preference for better quality but at a lower price, whichin the traditional market place are positively correlated valuepropositions (i.e. the better the quality, the higher the price). Thus,the Homo Economicus principle is not only reflected in the ‘higherpurchase for lower price’ paradigm, but the ultimate pursuit ofconsumer ‘self interest’ is catalysed to ‘higher quality for lowerprice’ preferences. For the national brand, quality and price con-siderations were not significant since consumers assume brandedsoap to be of high quality in any case, and they also understand thatthis comes at a higher price.

Premium generic brands fulfil their role as a mid-range choicefor consumers somewhere between generic brands and nationalbrands since consumers choose them based on a distinct set ofdetermining factors, although converging, to a degree, with thefactors affecting national brands in lieu of generic brands.

Consumer reaction to the third scenario shows that fewervariables affect brand choice for gifts. The Komter andVollebergh (1997) study told us that there is some form of anemotional hierarchy for family and friends when it comes togift-giving. We now probe this notion and check to what degreethis holds true for brand category choice. Generic brands are, ofcourse, clearly not positioned as gifts, and this is reflected in thenegative value for money association for both product categories.Image is important for gifts rather than satisfaction since giftsare not self consumed. Price is not important for gifts since both

products, chocolate biscuits and soap, are generally affordable.But image is important for gifts even in these low price productsegments; biscuits or soap are used as token of appreciationamong friends, children, teenagers and seniors. However, thekey factor for the gift purchases is image, both in the food andnon-food category. The overall conclusion therefore is that giftsare a distinct case since image drives purchase intention morethan for self and family purchases. When a gift is given, then thebrand of the present portrays the image of the gift giver in twoways: (a) their self-image (e.g. that they can afford a nicepresent), and (b) of the receiver (e.g. that they are worth a nicepresent). Our findings here also point towards the conceptsidentified in the literature on the motivation for gift-giving.Indeed our respondents too have image as a driving force forgift-giving, and as such seem to combine altruistic with agonis-tic motivation (Kim and Littrell, 2001).

All up, image is a key concern for all three purchase scenariosand all three brand categories with the exception of self use andfamily use purchases of the national branded non-food category. Inthe latter case, consumers take image for granted and at the sametime, the risk is lower than for food consumption. Risk differs forproducts eaten such as chocolate biscuits versus simply put onone's body such as liquid hand wash. In addition, even thoughimage is not a key factor to choose the national branded non-foodcategory for self and family use, it is indeed the sole factor when it

Fig. 2. Effect of importance of money on purchase intention for food brand.

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comes to gift giving. Similar to the food category, gift givers wantto make sure the receiver is happy with the gift.

5.2. Effect of importance of money on purchase intention for foodbrand

Next the study investigates the purchase drivers of gifts acrossthree ethnic groups. Previous research on Caucasians and EthnicChinese has established that their view on material things (such asgifts) and importance of money differ significantly (Tung andBaumann, 2009). MANOVA testing was applied to test for brandcategory choice, ethnicity and importance of money in the nextstage of this study, based on the premise that gifts, image andattitude towards money are interrelated constructs. The testidentified the effect of importance of money on the brand choicefor gifts in combination with ethnic background. For scenarios 1(self-use) and 2 (family use) there were no significant differencesfor the interaction terms (ethnicity� importance of money); con-sequently these results are omitted from this paper. However, forthe third scenario of gift giving, there are significant differencesoutlined next, separated by food and non-food results.

Overall, no ethnic group shows a purchase intention (intentionswere measured on a 7 point scale, hence scores below 4 indicate nopurchase intention, values higher than 4 denote a purchase inten-tion) after allowing for the interaction effect of ethnicity andimportance of money. Generic products are not well suited as a gift

and this is clearly demonstrated in the results. However, theMANOVA showed a significant difference among the ethnic groupson the interaction term itself (Fig. 2A; p¼0.024), particularly showinga different pattern for the ethnic Chinese sample. The Chinese whoput a moderate level of importance on monetary issues were theonly group that would be at least somewhat in proximity to a lowpurchase intention. The Caucasian and the ‘other Asian’ (mainlySouth Asian) clearly have no intention to buy generic brands as gifts.

As for generic brands, there is no or only a low purchaseintention for premium generic brands as gifts. Nonetheless, thestudy found a significant difference for the interaction effect(ethnicity� importance of money) on the purchase intention forpremium generic chocolate biscuits as a gift (Fig. 2B; p¼0.001).The Chinese have a different pattern to the other two ethnicgroups. This reminds us of the Qian et al. (2007) study thatsuggests Chinese cultural values directly impact gift-giving beha-viour because of the importance of face, guanxi and reciprocity.But then again, the Chinese perceive the importance of moneydifferently to the Caucasians (Tung and Baumann, 2009) and weincorporated this dimension. Our study found a high purchaseintention for all groups (in the 4–7 range on the 7 point scale) fornational brands as gifts, but the Chinese are indeed a distinctsegment since they have shown the lowest likelihood to buy in thecase of the segment indicating low importance of money (Fig. 2C;p¼0.055; i.e. trend towards a significant difference). All in all, theCaucasian only show a strong purchase intention in the gift

Fig. 3. Effect of importance of money on purchase intention for non-food brand.

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scenario to exclusively buy national brands, whereas the otherethnic groups appear more open to also consider, at least in part,premium generic brands.

The pattern for generic brands in the food and non-foodcategories are nearly identical, i.e. there is no real purchaseintention; the Caucasians and other Asians have somewhat similarintentions, but the Chinese are a distinct segment (Fig. 3A;p¼0.023) with highest values, but not high enough to potentiallyposition generic brands as gifts even for the highest score of 3.217(when only scores higher than 4 could indicate purchasing).

Similar to generic brands (food and non-food), there is no oronly a low purchase intention for premium generic brands.However, the scores are substantially higher for non-food suchas hand wash than for chocolate biscuits. In fact, values between4 and 5 represent the potential to reach a realistic purchaseintention of 5 and beyond if the product's positioning is slightlymore fine-tuned and upgraded. While overall there are significantdifferences for the MANOVA (Fig. 3B; p¼0.005), the pattern for theCaucasian and Chinese are practically identical, whereas the otherAsian group has shown a reverse pattern (i.e. the low and highimportance of money segments have higher purchase intentions).The South Asian group in our study is mostly comprised of Indians,and they have been found to be a distinct segment. They differfrom Caucasians and Chinese on many dimensions such as religion(mostly Hindu), customs and rituals (e.g. yoga, arranged mar-riages) and preferences in terms of aesthetics (e.g. architecture),clothing and food (e.g. spicy). How these differences may haveresulted in the reverse constellation is beyond our own study, butcould be investigated in follow up research. In our study, none-theless, this is the only MANOVA with no significant interactioneffects for gifts (Fig. 3C; p¼0.570). Regardless of the lack ofsignificance, the purchase intention for all ethnic groups for thenational branded product as a gift is high. This result is in line withthe finding for the food category with even higher purchaseintentions for the national brand, Tim Tam.

6. Conclusion

This study has broken new ground by examining whetherthere are differences in brand choice when buying for one self,for one's family or as a gift. The pattern for self and familyrelated purchases are very similar, but the key considerationsfor gift purchases are distinct in that the prime concern isimage. For the other scenarios, i.e. self and family, the keyconcerns are about value for money and satisfaction. In otherwords, purchase intention for self and family consumptions aredifferent from gift giving. The study demonstrates the impor-tance of the image factor since image is important (a) for alldecisions, and (b) in particular for gift giving where it is thekey variable, overpowering, in a backward deletion testingapproach, the other potential explanatory variables.

The second contribution of this study is its focus on thedifferences among ethnic groups in brand choice. Caucasiansexclusively intend to buy national brands as gifts regardless ofproduct category and whether they feel money is important tothem or not. The Ethnic Chinese, on the other hand, are the onlysegment that would potentially consider premium generic brandsas a gift in the non-food category, but only to a lesser extent alsofor food items. For other Asians, the moderate cluster in terms ofimportance of money is a distinct segment in comparison toCaucasians and the Chinese since their purchase intentions show,overall, a reverse tendency. This provides an area for futureresearch, i.e. why is this the case?

The study's overarching conclusion is that the Chinese andother Asians are closest to considering premium generic brands

(PGB) as gifts (with values of 4 that are close to the minimumintention of 5) and therefore represent a potential new segment ifthe PGBs are slightly repositioned and upgraded. However, theCaucasians do not consider generic brands nor PGBs as gifts andonly intend to buy National Brands as gifts.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the editor and reviewers fortheir helpful comments that made the paper stronger. Marco deGouveia is acknowledged for his early involvement with theproject. An early version of the paper was presented at theAustralian and New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC) con-ference, 28–30 November 2011, in Perth.

Appendix A. Overview of questions

A.1. Dependent variables

A.1.1. Purchase for self use questionYou purchase chocolate biscuits and intend to eat them by

yourself.In this scenario, how likely are you to choose each brand

category?Please select one response per row.

Least likely Mostlikely

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

HomebrandTriplechoc

WoolworthSelectChocolateSandwich

Tim Tam

A.1.2. Purchase for family questionYou purchase chocolate biscuits that are intended to be

shared by all other members of your household.In this scenario, how likely are you to choose each brand

category?Please select one response per row.

Least likely Mostlikely

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

HomebrandTriplechoc

WoolworthSelectChocolateSandwich

Tim Tam

A.1.3. Purchase for gift giving questionYou purchase chocolate biscuits as a small ‘thank-you’ gift

for a co-worker or friend.

C. Baumann, H. Hamin / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 21 (2014) 492–501 499

In this scenario, how likely are you to choose each brandcategory?

Please select one response per row.

Least likely Mostlikely

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

HomebrandTriplechoc

WoolworthSelectChocolateSandwich

Tim Tam

A.2. Independent variables

On a scale of 1 to 7, please select the number that bestrepresents the concept for each brand category:

Value for money

Poor value Highvalue

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

GenericBrands

Premiumgenericbrands

LeadingBrands

A.2.1. Product quality

Poor value Highvalue

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

GenericBrands

Premiumgenericbrands

LeadingBrands

A.2.2. Price

Poor value Highvalue

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

GenericBrands

Premiumgenericbrands

LeadingBrands

A.2.3. Satisfaction

Poor value Highvalue

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

GenericBrands

Premiumgenericbrands

LeadingBrands

A.2.4. Image

Poor value Highvalue

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

GenericBrands

Premiumgenericbrands

LeadingBrands

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