This research examines how consumers react to corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs that vary in geographic focus. Three experiments compare consumers' patronage of a company in response to local and distant CSR initiatives. The extant egocentrism literature suggests that a CSR activity focused locally, and thus, with greater personal relevance, should increase patronage of the company responsible for the CSR activity. Indeed, this egocentric bias, exhibited in the form of increased purchase intentions or actual choices, is found across all three studies. However, these egocentric tendencies are moderated by consumers' superordinate identities. In study 1, consumers' greater intentions to patronize a company whose CSR activity is domestic vs. foreign are moderated by their sense of global identity. In study 2, consumers' increased choices of a company whose CSR activity is in their home state vs. a distant state are moderated by levels of environmental consciousness. Finally, in study 3, increased patronage of a company whose CSR activity focuses in consumers' home city vs. a distant city depends on the salience and level of consumers' superordinate group identity.

This research tests the proposition that brands suffer prejudice and discrimination due to animosity toward a country with which they have a strong stereotypic association. In the first study, attitudinal data collected across a range of brands that vary in terms of the strength of the brand–country association indicate that brands with strong stereotypic association with a country suffer direct prejudice, in the form of more negative attitudes, related to animosity. When the brand–country association is less strong, the relationship between animosity and brand attitudes is moderated by the strength of the stereotypic association. In the second study, the level of brand–country association is manipulated experimentally to provide additional evidence of its moderating role on the relationship between country animosity and both prejudice toward (more negative brand attitudes) and discrimination against (less choice) a new brand.