The Effect of American Translated Brand Name Cue on Brand Association in Korean Market

Abstract

products. South Korea's population is aging rapidly. Coupled with the increase in the life expectancies, seniors are expected to account for over 20% off the population by 2026. These factors could lead to increased demand for Food Products in smaller, convenient package sizes. South Korea imports 60-70% of its food requirement and runs a significant food trade deficit. This creates opportunities for American branded food items in the Korean market. South Korea is one of the largest retail markets in Asia and consumer goods companies in the country reported a total of $221 billion in retail sales in 2010. This made it the fifth largest country for retail sales in the region, behind China, Japan, India, and Indonesia. Also it is expected that Asia's retail market will grow from $248 billion to $319 billion between 2011 and 2015, and sales in the consumer goods sector could expand by 2.3% a year or the same period. With 70% off the South Korea population classified by Price water Cooper as being part of the main retail target age of 15 to 64 years old, the outlook for its consumer goods products in industry seems positive. The present research attempts to obtain a better understanding of attitudes and preferences of Korean consumers with regards to American vs local brands, and to evaluate their relative strengths in terms of differentiating features. In addition, the extent to which consumer ethnocentrism accounts for a positive bias towards local domestic brands and a negative bias against products originating from USA, is examined, to identify if there was any strong domestic country bias in the choice of brands. The finding could be of interest to US companies in their formulation of foreign marketing strategies by offering a better understanding of how the foreign brands are likely to be perceived in relation to domestic products and those originating from other competing countries in to Korea. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Following the introduction, the second section provides a relative literature review. The third section presents the research methods use, and analyses. The fourth section discusses the results and the findings of this study. Finally, the study concludes with a discussion of the limitation of the study, and the future research in this field is presented as well.