Although country-of-origin has been a controversial topic in literature, there has been little research effort to explain the nature linkage between country-of-origin and perceived quality from consumers in emerging markets. Drawing on the notion of country-of-origin, this study proposes the concept of product-country-image which is operationalized with the three components of cognitive, affective and conative. Structural equation modeling is employed to explore the relationship between the product-country-image and perceived quality. The findings indicate that only ‘affective components’ are positively related to ‘conative components’ among three pairs. What is more, structural equitation modeling demonstrated that the influence of product-country image on perceived quality is simultaneously regardless of the level of consumers’ familiarity with a foreign country’s product. Using data collected from 348 Vietnamese consumers, this study generates new insights for academics and practitioners.

Country image is a construct with far-reaching commercial implications (Kotler and Gertner, 2002). It is often held up as an antecedent condition of attitude formation towards products (Verlegh and Steenkamp, 1999; Laroche et al., 2005; Zeugner-Roth and Diamantopolous, 2009), as a determinant of visiting intentions for tourist destinations (Nadeau et al., 2008; Martínez and Alvarez, 2010) or even as a source of political power (van Ham, 2001; Nye, 2004; Wang, 2008). However, the way in which country image is approached in the literatures dealing with it various venues of relevance almost exclusively threat the construct as a source of some exerted effect and rarely venture into the issue of how country image is formed and how it various venues of its commercial relevance interact. Some exceptions to this general rule can be found in White (2012) who explored how product image exerts a formative effect on country image, a country-of-origin effect in the inverse. Also, Nadeau et al. (2008) observed that country image as it pertains to destination image as well as to exports intersect in an interesting way and that the two areas of commercial relevance indeed are not completely separate. In the present study we postulate that the meaning attributed to a particular country’s image is the result of an oscillation of meaning between that attributed to objects (such as for instance products, destinations or people) associated to the country and the country image itself. I.e. a product perceived as being associated to a country would derive its meaning from the country image but also exert a feedback of meaning towards the country image. Any association is not only a determinant of meaning towards one of the objects in an association dyad (cf. Keller, 1993) but this meaning also, through association, transfer in the inverse direction as well. This suggests that any venue of meaning attribution to a country could potentially exert an effect on any situation in which the country in turn exerts a formative influence. For example, a product image of a product associated to a country could potentially exert an influence on the countries attractiveness as a tourist destination through a mediated influence through country image. In order to put this mechanism to the test 500 respondents from the USA (311 female, x age 46.5, respondents of Korean origin excluded) were recruited through an online panel and subjected to a psychometric test-series featuring items pertaining to the image of South Korea, the image of South Korean products and various factors pertaining to the respondent’s attitude towards South Korea as a tourist destination. The resulting data was subjected to statistical analysis using a covariance-based structural equation model approach. The results of the data analysis suggest that attitudes and notions directed to products from South Korea exert a statistically significant effect on the image of the country as a whole. This image in turn exerts an effect on the whether consumers express interest in visiting the country in their capacity as potential tourists. These results are in support of White (2012) in that they demonstrate that attitudes towards products from a particular country contribute to the attitude towards a country as a whole. The results also support Nadeau et al. (2008) in their finding that country image as it pertains to inferring the degree of quality of exports and the attractiveness of a place as a tourist destination should not be compartmentalized, but rather treated as a facets of the same construct. In the present study the case of South Korea was used with a particular goal in mind. The rather unusual historical particularities of the transition of South Koreas economy makes it highly interesting as an example for several reasons. Not only did South Koreas transition take place in a highly compressed timeframe, but it also took a route which runs counter to the notion that tourism often serves as the starting point of economic transition (Dieke, 2003; Dritsakis, 2004; Oh, 2005; Mishra et al., 2006; Kaplan and Celik, 2008) as the rise of South Korea can be said to have been driven by industrial development and exports, prior to the country becoming a popular tourist destination. The particularities of this path to a greater degree of economic development arguably shed new light on the issue of how country image can form and how it pertains to highly variable commercial contexts and how the effect the country image construct exert transect across these various venues of commercial activity.

본 연구는 중국 내수시장에서 제품의 브랜드와 제조국에 따른 제품형태별로 중국 소비자들의 제품품질 지각에 어떠한 차이가 나타나며, 이들 두 요인에 의해 소비자들의 제품품질 지각이 실제 영향을 받고 있는지를 살펴보고, 중국 내수시장에서 제품형태별 중국 소비자들의 구매의사결정을 추정해 보고자 하였다. 이를 위해 본 연구에서는 중국 상해에 거주하는 성인 소비자들을 대상으로 C-TV 제품의 구매의사결정에 관한 설문조사를 실시하였다. 연구결과, 브랜드와 제조국을 달리하는 7개의 C-TV 제품형태별로 중국 소비자들의 제품품질 지각에 차이가 있으며, 브랜드와 제조국이 중국 소비자들의 제품품질 지각에 영향을 미치고 있는 것으로 나타났다. 또한 중국 소비자들의 구매의사결정 모형의 추정 결과 단일 국적 제품의 경우에는 대체로 브랜드 선호도에 의해, 그리고 이중 국적 제품의 경우에는 주관적 규범에 의해 구매의도가 보다 큰 영향을 받고 있는 것으로 나타났다.