‘Support your country and buy Chinese brands’ – would Chinese consumers buy it?

This study explores the impact of advertising messages that contain national identity content on Chinese consumers’ purchase intention and actual purchase. A scenario-based experiment (n = 357) and an open-ended qualitative survey (n = 26) illustrated that Chinese consumers’ brand attitude and purchase intentions are positively influenced by national identity. Nevertheless, the findings suggest that such an advertising strategy is not sufficient for increasing actual product sales when employed on its own. The impact of these advertisements on actual purchase is affected and moderated by utilitarian and hedonic values.