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.

Research offers conflicting evidence with regard to the potential effectiveness of using authentic (focused on the actual self) versus aspirational branding (focused on the ideal self) strategies. This study extends previous research by modelling how four individual characteristics of value for cross-cultural market segmentation (an individual’s level of independence, interdependence, cosmopolitan orientation and local orientation) influence the actual and ideal self-congruity effects. The model is tested by using survey data from US (n=828) and Indian non-student consumers (n=824). Findings show that the actual self-congruity effect on brand attitude is stronger than the ideal self-congruity effect for interdependents and locals. Conversely, the ideal self-congruity effect on brand attitude is stronger than the actual self-congruity effect for independents and cosmopolitans. The study offers practitioners suggestions on the use of authentic versus aspirational branding strategies in their brand communications in order to elicit most positive brand attitude among consumers depending on their individual characteristics.

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.

본 연구는 사회정체성이론과 신호이론 등에 기반을 두어 한국 진출 다국적기업 자회사의 사회책임활동이 자회사 현지 직원들의 조직동일시와 조직시민행동에 미치는 영향을 살펴보았다. 구체적으로 다국적기업 자회사의 사회책임활동은 다국적기업 자회사의 조직시민행동에 정(+)의 영향을 미칠 것이라고 주장 하였다. 또한 다국적기업의 본사가 위치한 국가와 한국 간의 문화적 거리가 멀수록, 그리고 본사 지분율이 높을수록 사회책임활동과 조직동일시 간의 관계가 강하게 나타날 것이라고 주장하였다. 뿐만 아니라 자회사 현지 직원들의 조직동일시는 조직시민행동에 정(+)의 영향을 미칠 것이라고 주장하였다. 24개국 출신, 75개 한국 내 다국적기업 자회사에 근무 중인 505명의 한국 직원들을 대상으로 설문조사를 통해 획득한 자료를 활용하여 위계적 회귀분석을 실시하여 이상의 주장을 실증적으로 검증하였다.

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.

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.

본 연구는 중국 소비자의 외국제품에 대한 평가 및 태도에 영향을 미치는 대표적인 감정적 요인으로 소비자 적대감에 관심을 가진다. 보다 구체적으로 본 연구는 국가이미지 효과의 전 과정(국가이미지→제품평가→제품에 대한 태도)에 소비자 적대감이 어떤 영향을 미치는 지를 살펴보고자 한다. 이를 위해 본 연구에서는 상해, 북경, 청도, 심양, 성도 등 중국 내 5개 주요 도시의 1,327명의 성인 소비자들을 대상으로 설문조사를 실시하여 중국 소비자들의 주요국(미국, 독일, 일본, 한국)에 대한 적대감, 국가이미지 지각, 그리고 이들 국가의 전반적 제품에 대한 중국 소비자들의 제품평가 및 제품에 대한 태도에 관한 자료를 수집하였다. 연구결과, 소비자 적대감의 두 가지 유형인 국가적 적대감과 개인적 적대감은 국가이미지 효과를 구성하는 변수들에 상이한 영향을 미치고 있는 것으로 나타났다. 개인적 적대감은 국가이미지, 제품평가, 그리고 제품에 대한 태도에 일관되게 부의 영향을 미치는 반면, 국가적 적대감은 국가이미지 차원 중에는 관계이미지에만 부의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났고, 경제이미지와 제품평가에는 오히려 정의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났으며, 제품에 대한 태도에 미치는 영향도 비유의적으로 나타난 것이다.

최근 서비스 산업이 성장하면서 창업활동이 매우 활성화되고 있다. 창업활동은 경제에 새로운 활력을 불어넣어준다는 측면에서 경제성장에 긍정적인 영향을 미친다고 알려져 있지만 어떤 과정을 통해 경제성장률을 제고시키는지에 대한 연구는 매우 부족한 실정이다. 이에 본 연구에서는 금융시스템의 발전단계에 따라 창업활동이 경제성장에 미치는 영향이 어떻게 달라지는지 분석하였다. 분석대상을 고소득 국가군과 중간소득 국가군으로 구분하여 실증 분석한 결과 창업활동은 모든 분석 국가집단에서 경제성장에 유의한 양(+)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 한편, 금융시스템의 발전단계를 고려한 분석결과에 따르면, 고소득 국가군에서는 창업활동이 시장 중심 금융시스템의 발달과 연계하여 경제성장에 영향을 미치고 있었지만 중간소득 국가군에서는 은행 중심 금융시스템과 상호작용하여 경제성장에 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 하지만 금융시스템의 발전단계와의 상호작용변수의 추정계수는 유의한 음(-)의 값을 보였다. 이러한 결과는 창업활동이 경제성장에 미치는 긍정적인 효과가 금융시스템의 발전에 의해 오히려 약화된다는 것을 의미한다. 따라서 기존의 금융시스템 외에 창업활동을 지원하는 금융 서비스를 정책적으로 강화하는 것이 매우 중요하다고 여겨진다. 그러나 장기적인 관점에서 정책적으로 직접적인 창업자금을 조달하기보다는 시장을 이용한 자본조달 시스템을 강화하는 한편 창업 실패에 대한 안전장치를 마련하는 등의 추가적인 조치를 취하는 것이 바람직할 것이다.

이 글은 2003~2018년까지 16년간 중국이 아세안(동남아국가연합)에 직접 투자한 패널 데이터를 수집해 분석한 것으로, IMF의 대표적 금융기관 발전 수준을 보여주는 FI (Financial Institution Index)와 금융시장 발전 수준을 보여주는 FM (Financial Markets Index)을 채택해 ASEAN의 금융 발전 수준을 가늠 하는 변수로 삼았다. 각국의 정치적 수준을 대변하는 WGI(Worldwide Governance Indicators)와 각국의 인간개발지수를 나타내는 HDI (Human Development Index)를 채택해 아세안 사회 환경을 가늠 하는 변수로 삼았다. 이를 조절변수로 삼아 아세안에 대한 중국의 직접투자를 각각 상호작용을 하여 중국의 직접투자가 아세안의 경제에 미치는 영향을 관측하였다. 그 결과 중국의 동남아국가연합(ASEAN)에 대한 직접투자가 유치국 경제 성장에 긍정적인 영향을 미치지 않는 것으로 나타났다. 동시에 아세안의 사회 환경과 금융 발전은 중국의 직접 투자에 대해 부정적인 조정 작용을 가져온다.

The paper aims to understand the mediating effect of Country Image (CI) on the relationship between consumer cosmopolitanism and consumers’ purchase, visit and investment intentions towards a foreign country, considering the moderating effects of ethnocentrism, materialism, product familiarity, and visits to a country in a global market. The study extends research on the global and local consumption by simultaneously analysing the influence of country image dimensions and several moderating effects on consumers’ behavioural intentions. Four hundred and fifty-seven valid responses from international consumers were collected through a questionnaire measuring country image dimensions. Findings indicate that cosmopolitanism has a significant and positive effect on foreign consumers’ behavioural intentions and country image dimensions mediate this relationship. Moreover, a moderating effect was found for ethnocentrism, materialism, product familiarity, and visits to a country on the relationship between country cognitions and the intentions to visit the country. This study shows the importance of considering cosmopolitanism as a potential segmentation variable in international markets. The results can help managers and policymakers to better understand the image that foreign consumers hold about Portugal, their intentions to buy or invest in the country, as well as to think of Portugal as a tourism destination.

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.

With the deepening of the reform and opening up, Chinese export structure is getting better step by step. Economic and trade also get a sustained and rapid development and present a trend of globalization, information, marketization and integration. The increase of the foreign commercial enterprise promotes the export of China. The development of foreign direct investment, the rise of multinational corporations, the proportion of intra-industry trade and the deepening of international division of labor also attract widespread attention for the relationship between the direct investment and trade. However, it is obviously necessary to do the theoretical research and empirical analysis to accurately assess the positive effects brought by the trade of foreign direct investment. About the foreign direct investment how to impact China's trade structure is subject to our objective evaluation which is based on China's import and export trade statistics. Therefore, this article starts from the angle of the investigation of the present status of the export trade in China by comparing the domestic and foreign research status quo of foreign direct investment crude foreign direct investment on China's export trade structure optimization, the influence of the empirical analysis of FDI to our country export trade structure optimization, and based on this, advances the effectiveness of the optimization of the structure of export trade in our country's policy and the suggestion.