Abstract: Crisis response in the process of local brands' internationalization has gradually become an important issue attracting more and more attention. However, the existing researches focus on the "risks" caused by external causes (natural disasters, malicious competition and false media reports), with little attention paid to the "opportunities" caused by outgroup threat (foreign governments' sanctions against local brands). To fill this gap, we use a mixed research method (grounded theory, secondary data, experiment design and questionnaire) and find that when local brands confront high (vs. low) outgroup threat, native consumers show a higher intention of switch from foreign brands to domestic brands, and we-ness plays a significant mediating role. However, this effect only holds for high ethnicity brands. For low ethnicity brands, high (vs. low) outgroup threat has no significant difference in the effect of native consumers' intention of brand switch. This paper introduces outgroup threat as an external cause of brand crisis for the first time, and provides a new interpretation perspective from the macro association "we-ness" between native consumers and local brands. Besides, we also define the component dimensions of brand ethnicity in the Chinese context and test its boundary function. Our conclusions provide new interpretation and guidance for enterprises on how to respond to outgroup threat and promote native consumers' brand switching intention.

Key words: brand crisis, outgroup threat, we-ness, brand ethnicity