The country of origin effect (COE) has been a central topic in scholarly international marketing literature for over half a century, but the concept seems to have stubbornly resisted all attempts at providing an encompassing account of how it comes to affect consumers in practice. Through an approach which treats COE as a perceptual phenomenon that is contingent on various psychological mechanisms this conceptual work revisits some three central theoretical issues of COE research and attempt to ferret out tentative means of addressing some of these long lived problems that have been identified in the literature to date.

As the global cosmetics market becomes more competitive, cosmetics firms need to be more market-oriented. Consumers purchase cosmetics products not only based on product-related attributes (e.g., function) but also for non-product-related reasons such as novelty and a pursuit of variety. They are exposed and have access to a variety of choices imported from other countries, which further complicates decision-making. Globalization offers great opportunities for marketers as it may help expand the horizon of the market beyond the domestic boundary. Given that the market is becoming more competitive, it is imperative to understand what influences purchase decisions of global consumers. This study considers and examines extended susceptibility to global consumer culture (Extended SGCC) and its effect on affective commitment, which in turn influences behavioral commitment and loyalty. We consider four elements of extended SGCC: conformity to consumer trend, social prestige, quality perception, and corporate social responsibility. In addition to examining the structural relationships among the variables, we test whether country of origin (COO) moderates the proposed relationships. In order to test the model, we collected data from the purchasers of botanical cosmetics products that came from several different countries. A total of 798 users participated in the survey (425 users of domestic brands and 373 users of foreign brands). We performed several analyses related to the measurement model such as reliability analysis (Cronbach’s alphas), confirmatory factor analysis, and correlations analysis. Using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 21.0, we estimated the structural model. The overall model fit indices include: χ2=1118.934 with df=239, p=0.000; GFI=0.884; AGFI=0.855; NFI=0.924; CFI=0.934; RMSEA=0.068; RMR=0.069. The study finds that all elements of SGCC, with the exception of social prestige, have a significant influence on affective commitment. Specifically, conformity to consumer trend is found to have a significant effect on affective commitment. This means that consumers who conform to the global trend tend to have a higher level of commitment. One implication is that cosmetics firms may want to communicate to the consumers that their products fit the lifestyle corresponding to the global trend. Contrary to our expectation, social prestige is not found significantly related to affective commitment. It seems that social prestige is not an important factor in choosing botanical cosmetics products. This is understandable because, unlike some prestige products that consumers wear or use to be associated with their image or perceived quality (e.g., car, handbag), consumers may not purchase botanical cosmetics products to upgrade their social status. As expected, quality perception has a significant positive effect on affective commitment. The study shows that quality perception has the most significant impact on affective commitment. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is also found to have a significant impact on affective commitment. The finding suggests that companies should be or remain active in taking initiatives that advance social welfare. Our study shows that both affective and behavioral commitments are positively related to customer loyalty. Behavioral commitment, which consists of items representing purchase tendency, has a greater influence on loyalty than affective commitment. We anticipated that country of origin (COO) would moderate the proposed relationships. We find no significant moderating effect of COO. This can be interpreted that the structural relationships are upheld regardless of COO. It seems that global consumers evaluate foreign brands in the same manner as they do domestic brands. This suggests that cosmetics firms may want to be careful in differentiating their strategies based on countries as the return on investment may not be as handsome as they thought and global consumers may have more similarities than differences with respect to how they evaluate and purchase cosmetics products.

In the years 2010–2012 in Italy, the 3F sectors, fashion, food and furniture, marked a +5% (FinanciaLounge, 2014). To some extent, this rise may rely on the strong Made in Italy label that is historically “perceived by consumers as being associated with “true” luxury goods” (Hoffmann & Coste-Manière, 2014) and, in order to create nostalgia and credibility for their brands, many firms try to correlate their offer to the heritage of the Country of Origin (Fionda & Moore, 2009). In the academic literature, Country of Origin is one of the most analyzed method to enhance a firm’s competitive advantage, mainly thanks to its ability to increase positive perceptions about firms’ products in the customers’ mind (Agrawal & Kamakura, 1999; Aiello et al., 2009). Moreover, Country of Origin is defined as “the effect rooted in consumers’ images of the quality of specific products marketed by firms associated with a country of origin” (Verlegh, Steenkamp, & Meulenberg, 2005, p. 127). COO works as an information cue that covers the attitudes toward the products evaluation. In particular, COO influences customers’ brand awareness, perceived quality and brand associations depending on the country image, and, as a consequence, the overall brand equity (Agrawal & Kamakura, 1999; Chao, 1998; Magnusson, Westjohn, & Zdravkovic, 2011). For instance, some authors showed a positive bias (i.e. increased willingness to pay a higher price) toward products from some countries relative to others (Drozdenko & Jensen, 2009). For this reason, just few countries can benefit from their image and awareness in order to take advantage from the Country of Origin effect, such as Italy. Furthermore, besides the Country image, scholars found that the COO effect can vary depending on the product category “For a given category, country-of-origin credibility is high when consumers have a favorable image of the country’s products in that category, and low when the product–country image is unfavorable” (Verlegh et al., 2005, p. 129). In this perspective, firms should identify solutions to convey positive associations about their supply to customers (Phau & Leng, 2008). The relevance of this issue is confirmed by a lot of studies, where some communication tools related to COO effect are already investigated, like brand identification system, packaging, advertising copy and celebrity endorsement (Agrawal & Kamakura, 1999; Usunier, 2011). Actually, a lot of Italian firms use product placement exploiting the “Made in Italy” effect, where placement is here intended as the paid inclusion of branded products within mass media programming (Karrh, 1998). Just few examples are Piaggio with Vespa in Roman Holiday, Bacardi with Martini in James Bond and Ocean’s series, Riva Yacht with Aquarama in James Bond series and The Great Beauty, and Prada in The devil wears Prada. Many reasons are explaining such a great use of product placement. On one hand, in the last decade we have assisted to the fragmentation of media and their audience, and on the other one, consumers are more and more skeptical towards traditional benefit advertising and they use technology to avoid commercials (Hackley & Tiwsakul, 2006; Lehu & Bressoud, 2009). Integrating brands casually but notably in a media content appears to be an interesting alternative to traditional marketing communication tools (D’Astous & Chartier, 2000). Furthermore, product placement’s acceptance and its possibly effectiveness, as well as country of origin effect, is likely to vary across product category (Gupta & Gould, 1997; Russell, 1998). Moreover, we can assume that product placement impact on the overall brand equity in a positive way (Aaker, 1997; Miniero, Chizzoli, & Pate, 2013) as it is an effective tool that can increase brand awareness and develop favorable relations with customers (Chan, 2012). In particular, studies on product placement confirm an increased top-of-mind-awareness and unaided awareness of placed brands (Cholinski, 2012). Finally, even if studies on product integration effect on attitude toward placed brands are not univocal, a lot of publications present positive or at the very least neutral product placement influence on brand attitude (Russell, 2002). For instance, according to Miniero et al. (2013), product placement is a nice way to achieve communication objectives and it can be used to influence consumers’ attitude and intention to buy a specific brand (Miniero et al., 2013). To our knowledge, despite a huge employment of product placement in practice and a lot of contributions in the academic theory about these two topics, there is a gap in the literature about the relationship between the COO effect and the use of this communication tool from a practitioners’ perspective. On the contrary, from a consumers’ perspective, Tsai and Lu’s research find out a positive correlation between the use of product placement and the country image (Tsai & Lu, 2012). Moreover, due to the several studies concerning the positive impact of product placement and country of origin on brand equity, we are allowed to suppose that professionals can synergistically take advantage from both. Starting from Karrh’s studies on the practitioners’ perspective about product placement, our research aspires to draw any analogy and difference between Karrh’s findings and the Italian firm’s perceptions (Karrh, McKee, & Pardun, 2003; Karrh, 1995, 1998). Particularly, we aim to interview companies that belong to sectors where Made in Italy represents a key competitive component. In addition, our study attempts to explore if and how independent Italian firms exploit country of origin effect in their product placement in order to increase their brand equity. To answer our research questions, we could properly use the case study method (Yin, 2009). This qualitative methodology is very useful to explore unanticipated empirical discoveries (Eisenhardt, 1989). Our case study protocol will provide the analysis of three different data sources. In the first stage of our research, we will examine audio-visual materials, such as film, videotapes, websites and social media, to collect data in an unobtrusive method. In the second stage, we will go through public documents, newspapers and recent academic literature to understand trend topics on product placement and COO and to arrange guidelines suitable for the interviews. In the third ones, we will conduct in-depth face-to-face and semi-structured interviews with key figures of Made in Italy firms that integrated product placement in their communication mix at least once. More in details, interviews will be recorded and transcribed to ensure the completeness of the information gathered. Through the triangulation of these methods and sources we will achieve a richer and deeper data collection and we will also make the case study more detailed (Creswell, 2009). Although our research is still in progress, we expect to extend Karrh’s findings about product placement. More in details, we would like to focus our attention upon the integration between COO and product placement and we try to highlight any key element that can explain how to manage this relationship in order to increase brand equity.

Purpose: It has been suggested that the most potent form of the country-of-origin effect is derived from a country having a perceived specialization in a particular product category. By subjecting a novel conceptualization of how products and places form images in conjunction to experimental trial the evaluative pertinence of different facets of interrelation between country image and product categories is examined. Design/Methodology/Approach: A psychometric test-series, featuring a large number of brands from various product categories and countries was conducted. The results were subjected to structural equation modeling using a partial least squares approach. Findings: The findings suggest that the country-of-origin effect can be thought of as being derived simultaneously from several different image constructs, ranging from general to category-specific. These images generate country-of-origin effects in aggregation and the evaluative influence increases with the degree of specificity of how the image construct applies to a specific evaluation situation. Originality/Value: The present study represents an attempt to discern the relative size of the country-of-origin effects derived from different facets of the relationship between a country image and product categories. The results provide a tentative answer to the question of just how much product categories matter in the context of the country-of-origin effect.

Today all nations in the world focus on remaining competitive advantage by adding high values to their fashion businesses. The most typical example of such added value is fashion collection. In case of London Fashion Week, which is among the world’s top 4 most famous fashion collections where more than 5,000 journalists and buyers from 25 nations can be expected every season, it has great contribution to the economic wealth of London. It induces consumption of 20 million GBP and economic production effects of one hundred million GBP. According to Joo (2009), one of the main purposes of fashion collections can be defined as the invigoration of international marketing and the creation of consumption demand. Fashion collections lead to increased direct sales and consumption demand by developing new products based on leading fashion trends that are presented in the collection. The so-called Big four collections in Paris, Milan, New York and London have their own Country of Origin (COO) image, which represents each country, cities, brands, products and services. For example, Paris collection has been established as luxury image with hand-made and Haute Couture. Not only fashion collection but also fashion brands have applied specific country characteristics to their fashion brand’s image. This serves as a critical factor of competitiveness that communicates an integrated image of brands to the customers. Also, within the purchase decision-making process, consumers consider COO as an important element. Therefore, organizer of fashion collections as well as brands that engage in such should consider COO as a key factor. Most of the previous studies about fashion collections focused on content analyses. For example, Joo (2009) compared characteristics and current situations between four major overseas cities’ collections and Seoul collection. Additionally, there are studies about fashion style, trend, design and textile. Characteristics of color change in 1990s fashion collection (Kim & Kim, 2007) and an analysis of design of hats and fashion images in collections (Jeong & Jeong, 2008) have been conducted as well. Previous studies related to COO mainly focused on the product (Bilkey & Nes, 1982) and how the image of the producing country affects product evaluation. Thus, the purposes of this study are 1) to examine of fashion collection’s COO and fashion brand image effects on brand evaluation and purchase intention, 2) to analyze differentiation factors of COO image, brand evaluation, purchasing intention on Seoul, New York and Paris collection. We surveyed Korean, American and French who have experience in their own country’s fashion collection and used SPSS 21 for data analysis. Fashion collection’s COO and brand image has a great effect on brand evaluation and purchase intention. Moreover, it seems to increase the purchase intention by affecting brand evaluation. Therefore, the results of the study are as follows. First, we can confirm that the better the fashion collection’s COO and fashion brand image, the higher brand evaluation and purchase intention is. Second, when assessing fashion collection’s COO image and fashion brand image, brand evaluation and purchase intention differ according to Korea, US and French national stereotypes. This study goes beyond the general product-centric COO studies and introduces the fashion collection’s COO that can be valuable research in terms of contribution not only to academia, but also to the industrial field.

This study was to observe how globalization has transformed the attitudes and behaviors of consumers especially in the emerging economy environment such as Malaysia. The aim of this article is to identify the differences in consumers’ product preference for products made in 4 different countries – Japan, Korea, Malaysia and China. Further, this article also aims to analyze how consumers’ ethnocentrism affects product preference as well as how the effect of ethnocentrism varies across products from different countries of origin and product involvement levels. Information for consumers’ product preference was collected through a structured questionnaire from the Malaysian consumers. Concentrating on 2 product categories from 4 different countries, the questions in the questionnaire particularly focused on three different levels of analysis; in addition, CETSCALE was used to measure consumer ethnocentrism. Finally, the hypotheses were tested using ANOVA and t-test statistics, etc. The results provided support for all of the hypotheses, thereby revealing the presence of significant differences in consumer product preference, which is engendered by country of origin, consumer ethnocentrism and product involvement level effect. The research results here have implications for future studies on the effects of country of origin and consumers’ ethnocentrism in developing countries. Moreover, the results also contributed to the validation of CETSCALE in a culturally diversified environment.

This paper examines key determinants and the effect of country-of-origin on customer’s purchase intention of functional food and dietary supplement product in Vietnam. Exploratory study was identified to evaluate personal and social factors on customer’s buying behavior. Twenty-eight reflective constructs were adapted from literature and designed by using a seven-point Likert scale to facilitate measurement. By using non-probability convenience sampling, data was collected from a survey of 242 Vietnamese who have experienced in buying functional and supplement food. This paper employed partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) as a technique employed to analyze the measurement and structural models. The findings provide evidence that social prestige customer perceives and their positive attitude toward functional food which are main factors influencing on consumers’ purchase intention. Customer’s perceived prestige plays an important role in decision-making process to purchase. The higher social prestige taken up in consumers’ mind, the higher consumers’ purchase intention is. Moreover, the more positive attitude customer holds toward functional food, the higher consumers’ purchase intention. The research results provide useful information in current understanding of what antecedents determine factors influencing customer’s intention to purchase functional food and lead to managerial implications for business strategies.