Abstract
The country-of-origin (COO) effect is one of the most controversial areas of scientific marketing research because some studies results lead to different conclusions about the COO and its impact on consumer attitude and behavior. The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of COO effect on consumer’s attitude to a product and how it depends on COO effect’s moderators in the Lithuanian market. Theoretical analysis reveals that COO effect on consumer’s attitude to a product depends on moderating effects of consumer experience and product knowledge, consumer ethnocentricity, consumer product involvement, consumer perceived product risk and a product brand. Three moderators like consumer ethnocentricity, product knowledge, and product involvement were chosen for our empirical research, as they were not deeply explored in previous empirical studies. Findings showed that a consumer's attitude to a product is strongly influenced by COO effect. A consumer's attitude to a product is also influenced by COO effect moderators, which are product knowledge and product involvement. Analyzing the results of empirical research it is also noticed that in this research case, when respondents evaluated their attitude to products made in foreign countries, one of COO effect moderators analyzed in theory, a consumer's ethnocentricity, did not have influence on a consumer's attitude to a product. The original contribution of this article, the study investigates moderating effects of consumer ethnocentricity, product involvement, and product knowledge to the relationship between COO effect and consumer‘s attitude to a product in an emerging market.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ee.28.4.17535
Highlights
In an era of globalization and market integration, the economy is undisputable without international trade, and residents in each country often cannot imagine their lives without imported products
After analysing the empirical research results, it was found that COO effect strongly influences the consumer's attitude to a product
A consumer's attitude to a product is influenced by COO effect moderators, which are consumer product knowledge and product involvement
Summary
In an era of globalization and market integration, the economy is undisputable without international trade, and residents in each country often cannot imagine their lives without imported products. For the sellers of such products, it is very important, even necessary, to know what factors affect consumer decisions when choosing foreignmade products. Choosing a product is a quite difficult and complex process, during which a consumer evaluates all the available information about the product and makes a decision to buy it or not. A process of choosing a product is going easier when a consumer has a considerable amount of information about products from which to choose, or in the case of a repurchase situation. When a consumer has a minimum or absolutely no information about a product, a completely different situation occurs: in such a case, a consumer has to make a decision to choose one product from several possible, and because he does not have information necessary to make a decision, he is looking for it at a point of sales and makes decisions with the information that is awailable (Jimenez & San Martin, 2010; Yu et al, 2013)
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