This study aimed to explore “strong” brands, whose image is seldom afected by unfavorable information such as negative word of mouth and company scandals. Two studies showed that consumers' atitudes toward brands could be divided into two groups: cognition-based ones and emotion-based ones; furthermore, brands with high emotional eval-uation were les afected by negative information than ones with high cognitive evaluation were.

This paper discuses the impact of animosity on consumer behavior based on the Modified Animosity Model (MAM) which is developed by Jin (2007a) by introducing a social context factor to the original Animosity Model of Klein et al. (1998). The analysis of the experimental researches conducted in Korea and France validated MAM. The conclusion here is consistent with those early researches in China (Jin, 2007a; Furukawa and Jin, 2008): the animosity would affect the willingness to buy indirectly, but not directly. Meanwhile, the subjective norm would have a relatively strong effect on the willingness to buy.