Moderator Effect of Product Involvement and Brand Familiarity on the Relationship of Country of Manufacture and Chinese Consumers’ Product Attitude

Abstract

This study applies the country of manufacture theory into the cosmetics industry to find if the country of manufacture (COM) affects consumers’ product attitude and if some factors moderate this effect. It uses innisfree Air Cushion, a Korean cosmetic made in China as a research object. That is, it uses an object whose COB is Korea, and whose COM is China. The first objective of this study is to examine if the COM has an effect on consumers’ product attitude. Second, it examines if product involvement and brand familiarity have effect on consumers’ product attitude as important marketing factors. Third, it examines if the product involvement and brand familiarity could relieve the negative relationship between the COM and product attitude. The findings are similar to most previous studies. It tells that the country of manufacture is still significant to Chinese consumer’s attitude towards cosmetics products, and product involvement has a positive relationship with product attitude is consistent with those of previous studies. However, the finding shows that product involvement does not moderate the effect of the COM on product attitude. Our hypothesis that brand familiarity is significant to consumer’s product attitude and moderate the COM attitude on product attitude in the negative direction is not rejected. When consumers are familiar with the brand, they usually have a positive product attitude. The brand also moderates the COM effect negatively so that if brand familiarity is high, they may have relatively positive attitude towards the product regardless of COM effect. High brand familiarity and brand awareness is the most important factor for marketing managers of multinational companies.