Influence Of Country Of Origin Research Articles

Country of Origin and Brand Image on Purchase Decision of South Korean Cosmetic Etude House

This research aims at knowing the influence of country of origin (COO) and brand image on purchase decision of Etude House, a South Korean cosmetic brand. A sample of 100 consumers of Etude House was the respondents that were selected using snowball method. The questionnaire were distributed to women consumers who live in Semarang and have been using the products in the last three months. Multiple regression analysis was to see if the influence of COO and brand image on purchase decision is significant. The results show that COO and brand image had positive and significant influence on the purchase decision of Etude House products

Investigating Quality Perceptions of International Services by Chinese Consumers

Consumers are known to use the country of origin (COO) of a product to infer the quality of products. Products of technologically advanced countries such as the United States and Germany are known to enjoy positive country-of-origin effects. Conversely, products made in the developing countries typically suffer from negative COO effect. While this influence of COO is widely recognized for products, the same cannot be said about services. Only a handful of studies have empirically investigated the relationship between COO and perceived service quality. Additionally, most of these studies in this research paradigm are undertaken in developed markets; hence, their findings cannot be extrapolated to the newly industrialized countries (NICs) that offer tremendous market potential for global services. It has, therefore, become imperative for multinational companies to understand if and how consumers in the major NICs use COO and other cues to infer service quality. This insight is critical in developing effective pricing and promotion strategies for these markets. Using data collected from consumers in Beijing in the People's Republic of China, we demonstrate significant COO effect on two service categories: hotels and restaurants. We also highlight how these research findings will help managerial decisions about pricing and promotion. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Exploring the Dimensions of Country of Origin and Its Leverage on Consumer Buying Preferences : A Qualitative Study of Pakistani Consumer Market

This research paper aims to explore and enhance the understanding about the country of origin and its leveraging effect on consumer buying preferences. Firms all around the world consider expanding their businesses into foreign markets. Through reduction in trade barriers and perfections in communication, the dream of becoming a “Global Company” seems relatively easy. Branding with relevant differentiation and value proposition is considered a sound methodology to create patron loyalty across the world. However, the customer’s brand assessment procedure is a complex phenomenon with a sum of factors. One crucial, albeit often ignored, factor is the Country of Origin (COO) of the brand. This paper attempts to explore that how the consumer buying preferences are being affected due to the product’s origin, or “made in” tag. It is an exploratory study, which tries to analyze in detail, through structured interview method, that what kind of impact COO has over customer preference, in which product categories this influence is high and what factors have a potential negative impact on purchase decision. For firms viewing the world as their market, prerequisite for marketers is to realize the consequences of COO effects on their brands and establish policies to counter / control (as the case may be) the influence of COO on its brand. This qualitative research also considers and reviews the effect of COO on brand assessments through the study of backgrounds available in current management literature. It also focuses on the aspects that affect the degree of impact of the COO on the brand. Finally, this study paves the path for the strategists to take advantage of the findings and consider COO image as professed by the customer. This study led to endorsements on how to grab the COO effect for Multinational and Local (Pakistani) firms who intended to enlarge to foreign markets.

Impact of country of origin and word of mouth on brand equity

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of the image of country of origin (COO) and word of mouth (WOM) toward brand equity (BE). Design/methodology/approach – Questionnaire was deployed to collect data. Prior to data collection, validity, and reliability tests were performed. Valid and reliable questionnaire was distributed to car customer in Jabodetabek region. It was succeeded to distribute 389 questionnaires and completely filled up by respondents. Structural equation modeling further was deployed to analyze the data. Findings – COO and WOM significantly influence BE indirectly thorough BE dimensions. WOM exhibited stronger influence toward BE. The influence of COO and WOM toward BE dimension was also investigated. WOM showed stronger influence toward BE dimension, in descending order are brand loyalty (BL), brand association (BAS), perceived quality (PQ), and brand awareness (BA). COO showed weaker influence and different order, in descending order are BA, PQ, BL, and BAS. Originality/value – Role of WOM in marketing has been extensively discussed by researchers. It is generally acknowledged playing a considerable role in influencing and forming consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions. However, up to this date role of WOM on BE has not been explicitly studied by researchers. COO in another hand has been related to BE although in a limited references. Those studies were performed outside of Indonesian consumer. Up to this date study of COO of Indonesian consumer behavior remains unaccounted.

Influence of COO on product evaluation of mobile phones by Indian consumers: an empirical study

Purpose– The purpose of this study is to attempt to address the effect of country of origin (COO) from three different dimensions, namely, country image (CI) effect, COO image effect and awareness level about the COO of the brand and its resultant effect on product evaluation (PrEva). Further, the brand awareness, level of involvement and the COO interaction effect on consumer PrEva has also been studied to indicate the intensity of COO impact. Due to rapid globalization and reduction in trade barriers, major emerging economics from Asia witnessed entry of cross-border brands into their markets. India, as an emerging economy, has also followed the trend. In this backdrop, the present study is proposed for a better understanding of the effect of COO on PrEva.Design/methodology/approach– The study has been conducted in India, and the mobile phone market has been taken as the hub of the study because of the presence of maximum cross-border companies in India. The study is built on existing literature on influence of COO, brand image (BI), awareness about brands, CI and product image on consumer’s evaluation of mobile phones. Seven theoretical constructs have been used to test the relationship between the COO and consumer PrEva for the selected product with the help of structural equation modeling technique.Findings– The study shows that brand awareness for the class of mobile phones selected does not affect PrEva whereas CI, which is a general perception about the country from where the product originates, significantly affects consumers’ PrEva. Results also show that COO does not act as a mediator between CI and PrEva even though COO has a significant negative direct effect on PrEva. Thus, from this study, the learning for marketers in this price segment for mobile phones in emerging markets is that consumers are more sensitive to features per price than any other influencers. So, BI and/or COO are not sufficient conditions for product success in emerging market like India.Research limitations/implications– The findings are outcomes of an empirical study conducted in mobile handset industry of India based on the sample set of urban consumers in the city of Kolkata, India. It is quite possible that there may be other issues relevant to other parts of the country. This may influence the degree of association studied herein. Hence, the results may be treated with caution in terms of the generalizations of the same to other regions and countries. The study may, in future, be done by including questions related to price sensitivity and perception about features of the mobile phone hand-sets. This may give a clearer picture about the influences of these factors on PrEva of mobile phones in emerging markets. Finally, this study should be repeated in other major emerging markets to test the general applicability of the theoretical model and the empirical results introduced in this paper.Practical implications– For the low-end mobile handset market, general country characteristics from where the product originates reduce the importance of specific product attributes in evaluating the product. We may further conclude from the present study that the country’s overall image can be an effective tool to influence the consumer PrEva process. To be competitive in an emerging country like India, multinational firms should promote the overall country’s image to cement relationship with target consumers.Originality/value– Moreover, Ahmed and d’Astous (1996) viewed that several empirical research have independently focused on the impact of COO on the country, product or brand level, but there is lack of an integrated approach in this regard to capture different propensity of effects of COO at different levels. To our knowledge, it is one of the first attempts to analyze consumers’ PrEva of mobile phones in an emerging market.

Consumers’ Demographic Differences and the Country-of-Origin Effects on Evaluations of Product Categories: An International Study

The aim of this study is to fill in a gap in Country-of-Origin (COO) studies by assessing the relationship between COO and consumer decision-making processes in Morocco, an emerging market, and non-Western Mediterranean country and culture. Specifically, this research study demonstrates that the consumer demographic characteristic of age does make a difference in the COO influence for product categories within Morocco. Age was shown to interact with the impact of COO with regard to purchasing decisions regarding products from more industrialized/economically advanced nations, compared to products from less economically advanced/industrialized nations. These results have managerial implications in assisting multinational organizations in their market segmentations and positioning strategies.

Study Regarding the Influence of Country of Origin (COO) over the Consumer Decision-Making Process in Buying Food

The country of origin effect is considered to be the positive or negative influence that the country of origin of one product has over the consumer in the buying decision-making process. The COO could act as a barrier for the consumer or as stimuli for purchasing and is stronger when it comes of food products. The general aim of the research is to determine the Romanian consumer’s perceptions of local products and to determine how the COO effect influences the consumers. Two focus groups were organized in Cluj-Napoca. Participants were asked to mention for different food products the country of origin they prefer to be the producer from. The interview consisted also in asking the participants to rank attributes such as: price, brand and country of origin, important to them in the buying decision-making process. Results indicate that for some food products such as (cheese, meat and vegetables) the consumers prefer local Romanian products while for others (sweets, wine) they are willing to buy foreign products. Results indicate that price and brand are more important than the country of origin when it comes of some food products like sweets and wine, while for products like dairy, fruits, vegetables, it is important their country of origin. The COO effect is necessary to be studied among the Romanian consumers because of the future implementation of labels of origin for different food products which will be sell on different markets. Therefore, it is important that first of all, the country of origin influence should be studied over the Romanian consumers.