Nation Brands in Expert Electronic Word-of-Mouth: An Abstract

Abstract

Experts’ reviews shape consumer’s preferences and purchase decisions because they are often perceived as unbiased and trustworthy. Wine industry is a high value agricultural industry from the perspectives of both the main raw agricultural and the value added in the finished products. As a high value industry to both governments and consumers, countries spend billions on marketing their agricultural industries to not only their own citizens but also foreign citizens all over the world including these experts to establish a good product reputation. This paper examines the role of country of origin in expert eWOM (ratings and reviews) through large dataset from the global wine industry. Furthermore, we processed the review content by applying a structured automated text analysis program Diction. The result of ANOVA test demonstrates that there are significant differences between countries in terms of price, rating, and all the Diction content dimensions at the p < 0.001. We also find significant effects on wine quality ratings of price, country of origin, and review of content by conducting regression analysis. Indicated by the size of effect on ratings, expert reviewers use price as signal of quality when they provide eWOM. Country image significantly influences their review in most cases exception of Australia and France. USA variable is non-significant when considered alone but is significant when considered with price. France variable is non-significant with price included in the regression but has a significant bonus in ratings when not considering the effect of price. The Australia variable was non-significant in all regression analysis indicating that there was Australian wine ratings were not statistically different than minor wine producing countries. This paper provides several contributions in the field of expert eWOM and country of origin literatures. Wine producer in prestigious wine producing countries such as Germany and Italy can extract a price premium related to the country that is perceived by expert as high quality. However, producers in less prestigious wine producing countries (e.g., South African or Chilean) can signal quality through a higher price that can help them overcome the country image bias and aid the perception by experts of high quality, and they can also take advantage of the low price segment of consumers. Producers can also manage expert eWOM by priming these reviewers to use more active, certain, optimistic language in reviews to increase quality ratings. Furthermore, governments and industry associations can encourage experts to writes reviews with active, optimistic and central language to have an influence on quality rating, and thus develop country images.