Previous country-of-origin research has treated opinions of countries as either positive or negative, even though people may in fact hold conflicting opinions about countries. The extant literature on ambivalence suggests that the coexistence of positive and negative opinions of a country should increase avoidance of objects associated with that country, above and beyond the effects of mere positivity or negativity. Data collected from French consumers who varied in degrees of ambivalence toward the US reveal that ambivalence, measured indirectly through consumers’ coexisting positive and negative views, is indeed negatively related to consumers’ willingness to buy emblematic American brands. The findings highlight the latent nature of ambivalence, the difficulty of assessing the subjective experience of the ambivalence state, and the importance and practicality of using indirect measures.
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