From stigma to substitution: a qualitative study on consumer reevaluation of the “Made in China” label in a disrupted automobile market

Purpose This study aims to explore how consumers reevaluate deeply integrated country-of-origin (COO) stigmas in the context of market disruption. The authors aim to examine consumers’ perceptions of “Made in China” and highlight the legitimation mechanisms they use to navigate the novel market environment. Moreover, the authors decipher the cognitive and affective dimensions of country image to identify the cues that trigger the transformation of “Made in China” stigma. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts a qualitative, consumer-centric approach based on 20 in-depth interviews. The theoretically driven snowball sampling technique ensured sample diversity across socio-demographic characteristics, prior automobile use and purchase intention. The analysis of narratives lets us capture the transformation of embedded stigma. Findings The post-2022 market disruption facilitates the transformation of consumers’ COO perception and forces consumers to reconcile old product cues with new realities, revealing the tension between cognitive and affective cues. The findings demonstrate that consumers develop unique legitimation mechanisms at both cognitive and affective levels. Consumers perceive borrowed legitimacy through Western partnerships and the ubiquity of Chinese automobiles in taxis and carsharing as a novel cue of quality and reliability, and local production as a cue of ease of service and trustworthiness. Meanwhile, price decouples from brand heritage, serving as a new status proxy. These mechanisms challenge the conventional trust-building strategy, facilitating a rapid stigma transformation. Originality/value This study makes several key contributions. First, it introduces novel institutional trust accelerants that explain the transformation of embedded stigma under choice constraints. Second, it extends the Theory of reasoned action (TRA) by mapping cognitive and affective cues to TRA’s attitudinal and normative pathways.