Abstract
The country of origin or where a given product was designed or assembled has been found to be influential inseveral consumer studies. With the differentiation between the country of assembly and the country of design,the aim of this study was to examine the effect of country of origin (COO) factors on the purchasing decisionsmade by purchasing Saudi managers in Saudi Arabia. The study identifes COO for two types of products,machine tools and component parts. Using convenience sampling method, a pilot-tested questionnaire surveywas sent out by email to 531 industrial managers responsible of the machine tools purchasing and componentsparts in Saudi Arabia with a response rate was 62 %, the author presents findings on purchasing managers’perceptions of industrial products sourced from a total of 18 countries. The findings of this study revealed thatCOO is a significant and major factor in Saudi managers’ purchase decisions with respect to industrial products.This study provides Saudi perspectives and insights on the ongoing debate regarding the role of country of originin our increasingly globalized world. The study is timely in view of the continued pace of globalization, withmost multinationals outsourcing their production in one or more countries. The results should be of interest to avariety of organizations involved in industrial products, including designers, manufacturers, buyers and otherstakeholders.
Highlights
There is a plethora of international marketing literature which examines the role of country of origin (COO) image as a significant covariate of product or service brand image (Alsughayir & Abbas, 2012; Al-Sulaiti & Baker, 1998; Li et al, 2000)
With the differentiation between the country of assembly and the country of design, the aim of this study was to examine the effect of country of origin (COO) factors on the purchasing decisions made by purchasing Saudi managers in Saudi Arabia
The findings suggest that the product design country of origin is a key factor in Saudi purchasing managers’ decisions when sourcing both component parts and machine tools
Summary
There is a plethora of international marketing literature which examines the role of country of origin (COO) image as a significant covariate of product or service brand image (Alsughayir & Abbas, 2012; Al-Sulaiti & Baker, 1998; Li et al, 2000). The majority of consumers are thought to utilize COO to encapsulate specific product-related attributes (Alsughayir & Abbas, 2012; Sanyal & Datta, 2011; Benny, 2008; Davidson et al, 2003; Hamin & Elliott, 2006; Lin & Chen, 2006; Papadopoulos & Heslop, 2002; Phau & Suntornnond, 2006). Consumers have been found to positively evaluate products whose COO has a high manufacturing reputation, irrespective of the actual performance of the specific products (Papadopoulos & Heslop, 2002). This could be one explanation why German-made cars tend to receive positive evaluation among consumers, given the country’s strong manufacturing reputation
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