Digital Platforms and Brand Origin: How Native Features Shape Consumer Perceptions of Global and Local Brands in India.

India’s e-commerce ecosystem has witnessed an unprecedented convergence of global and homegrown brands within a single scrollable interface, compelling researchers to rethink how brand evaluation actually unfolds in algorithm-mediated spaces. Unlike brick-and-mortar settings where physical cues dominate, digital platforms impose their own perceptual logic through deliberate design choices navigational simplicity, behavior-driven recommendation engines, and crowd-sourced review architectures each quietly shaping what a brand comes to mean before a consumer even clicks Add to Cart. To investigate these mechanisms, this study collected primary survey data from 130 regular digital platform users distributed across urban India, with a majority falling between the ages of 18 and 35. Hierarchical multiple regression was applied to examine the extent to which platform-native design features drive purchase intention, and whether brand origin specifically the distinction between globally marketed brands and domestically rooted ones modifies these relationships. In the first regression block, platform features explained 42.1% of variance in purchase intention (ΔR² = .421, F (3, 126) = 31.24, p < .001), with peer review systems registering as the strongest single driver (β = .341, p < .001). Introducing brand origin in the second block contributed an incremental 9.8% of explained variance (ΔR² = .098, ΔF = 14.87, p < .001). Global brands demonstrated a perceived quality-credibility advantage (β = .312, p < .001), whereas local brands held a meaningful edge on cultural authenticity (β = .287, p < .001). A statistically significant interaction between platform experience quality and brand origin (β = .214, p = .001, ΔR² = .065) indicates that superior platform environments sharpen these origin-linked perceptual advantages, while weaker ones tend to compress them. All four study hypotheses were substantiated. By situating these findings within Country-of-Origin (COO) theory and the Technology Acceptance Model, this paper opens a new conversation about how national brand identity performs and is reinterpreted inside India’s rapidly maturing digital retail infrastructure.