Disentangling country-of-origin effects: the interplay of product ethnicity, national identity, and consumer ethnocentrism

Abstract

International audienceThe country-of-origin (COO) of products has been shown to affect consumer choice, especially in situations where the origin has a stereotypical association with particular products and depending on certain consumer traits (e.g., national identity, consumer ethnocentrism). However, little is known about how these phenomena are related. Two controlled experiments conducted in two different countries and product categories reveal that product ethnicity moderates the impact of national identity but not of consumer ethnocentrism. National identity is found to influence consumer preference only if the foreign product ethnicity is higher but not lower than that of comparable domestic products. Furthermore, while consumers with a low national identity are positively affected by a high product ethnicity of foreign products, this effect vanishes with increasing levels of national identity. This research has implications for academics and practitioners alike, as it examines important boundary conditions of country-of-origin effects that have been undiscovered so far

What Mongolia Produces that the World Should Know About? Consumers’ Information Processing Mechanisms

“…Research regarding the way consumers perceive and evaluate a product revealed that when consumers are processing products' COO information they tend to rely on three mechanisms: cognitive, affective, and normative (Table 1) (Johansson, 1989;Obermiller & Spangenberg, 1989). As a result, these three processes seem to influence consumers' perception about the overall evaluation of the products (Johansson, 1989;Obermiller & Spangenberg, 1989;Fischer, 2017). Country of origin is used as a "signal" for overall product quality and quality attributes, such as reliability and durability (Li & Wyer, 1994;Steenkamp, 1989).…”

“…In the case of cognitive process, scholars argue that it is used as a cue, a signal, of the quality of the products (Bloemer, Brijs, & Kasper, 2009;Fischer, 2017), even though this mechanism may also be associated with emotions, pride, status, authenticity, as well as identity or other attributes related to consumers' selfexpression (Fischer, 2017). Hence, apart from the intrinsic cues that are associated with the physical characteristics of the products, consumers may also use extrinsic cues like COO during their information processing (Veale, 2006).…”

“…Similarly, the affective mechanism seems to be closely related to consumers' emotional feeling towards a product's COO, which can involve not only their memories about a given country, but also consumers' national and ethnic identities (Fischer, 2017). Therefore, the affective process does not tend to be based on consumers' knowledge about the products, but on their personal perception of the product's COO image (Askegaard & Ger, 1998).…”

Charity begins at home? Setting a future research agenda for national identity and charitable ethnocentrism

“…It is an economically motivated form of domestic country bias (Zeugner-Roth, Zabkar, & Diamantopoulos, 2015) that results in a negative disposition towards non-domestic markets, products and brands (Carpenter, Moore, Alexander, & Doherty, 2013). Highly ethnocentric consumers will disregard other criteria such as price and quality in their decision making (Fischer & Zeugner-Roth, 2016) and have a tendency to overestimate domestic product quality whilst doing the opposite for foreign offerings (Klein & Ettensoe, 1999). As well as representing an economic threat, foreign products may also be viewed as a form of cultural menace (Cleveland et al, 2009).…”

Italian Restaurants in Danish Consumers’ Perceptions: A Multi-Cue Analysis in a Product Country Image Perspective

“…: Schooler, 1965;Han, 1989;Roth & Romeo, 1992;Martin & Eroglu, 1993;Papadopoulos & Heslop, 2003;Usunier, 2006;Zeugner-Roth & Diamantopoulos, 2009) and is continuing to receive great attention by academics (e.g. : Zeugner -Roth, Žabkar & Diamantopoulos, 2015;Fischer & Zeugner-Roth, 2017;Motsi & Park, 2019). Nevertheless, this is a very complex and fragmented research area and further studies are needed in order to increase the academic knowledge on the phenomenon (Verlegh & Steenkamp, 1999).…”