| Summary: | This study examines consumer perception of global brands vs. local brands in the Indian car industry. Consumer brand perceptions have substantial implications in Marketing. The study explores and understands consumer perceptions of global and local car brands in India by accomplishing the secondary objectives. The secondary
objectives were achieved by highlighting the factors that effect consumer preference for global brands; by examining the effects of country of origin on consumer perceptions of global brands and local brands; and by studying the effects of consumer ethnocentrism towards global brands.
For creating a deep understanding of consumers insights of global car brands against local car brands, qualitative approach was adopted with an in-depth and semistructured interview process. Interviews as a qualitative tool helped the researcher to uncover individual covert feelings and emotions towards perception of global brands vs. local brands.
The findings of the study advised that the consumers who possessed global car brands, preferred their car brands due to factors such as global presence, worldwide reputation, and quality of being a foreign make. Prestige or status had a very little or no influence in their preference for global car brands. Consumers made favorable perceptions of the country, wherein they tend to associate factors such as superior
quality, technical advancements, modernization, etc. to the country from which the brand had taken its origin. Consumers who owned a local car brand evaluated the local brand in a favorable manner, wherein they tend to associate the brand to India's strong automobile sector that makes quality and technically efficient cars. The study
found to have both non-ethnocentric consumers and consumers who were low on CET. Most of the respondents perceive local brands to be good in India, but not as good as the global ones in quality, technical expertise and designs of the cars.
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