New Zealand Consumers' Attitudes Toward Imported Products

Abstract

This paper investigates the foreign product image of New Zealand consumers, to determine how these “made in” stereotypes are formed. A survey of 208 New Zealand respondents from the Greater Auckland area were analyzed to determine what were the general attitudes of these consumers toward products form specific foreign countries, and whether these attitudes were product specific. The specific products studies studied were automobiles, televisions, clothing, food, home appliances and toys. The countries studied were New Zealand, Australia, S. Korea, the United Kingdom, W. Germany, Japan and the United States. This research revealed that a consumer's attitudes about the quality of the automobile produced by a particular country produced a “halo effect” that covered all products from that country. This finding suggests that a country's efforts to penetrate the New Zealand auto market will have far-reaching effects on all products from that country.