The Effects of China’s Country-of-Origin Image on Korean Consumers’ Perceived Value and Purchase Intentions: Comparison between Country-of-Manufacture (COM) and Country-of-Brand (COB)

Abstract

To infer the true state of a regional product’s attributes, consumers use the image they have of the product’s region of origin; however, products may have multiple countries of origin in their design, branding, sourcing and manufacturing becuase more products are increasingly a result of multi-firm and multi-country efforts. We examined how the country-of-origin image (country image and product image) affect international consumers’ perceived value (function value and symbolic value) and purchase intentions of made-in China goods by extending and deepening the flexible model. Second, to investigate the differences of COO effects according to different types of country-of-origin we divided the traditional country-of-origin into two components: country-of-manufacture (COM) and country-of-brand (COB). We then explore how the impact of China’s country image on consumers’ perceived value and purchase intentions varies when China is the COM or COB of the same product. Six hypotheses were proposed to test our anticipations. We recruited 800 Korean adult consumers who previously purchased made-in China products to participate in the online investigation. Data analyses were conducted with confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling using SPSS and AMOS. The main results are discussed as follows. First, the effects of China’s COO image on Korean consumers’ perceived value and purchase intentions vary when China is the COM or COB of a product. Second, a positive effect of the function value and symbolic value on the purchase intentions was found. Literature and practical implications of findings are discussed and suggested in the conclusion.