Country of origin and stereotypes’ influence on the brand evaluation of a product

Country of origin and stereotypes’ influence on the brand evaluation of a product 1 1 Introduction 1.1 Definition of the Problem During the last years to define the concept of COO has become difficult due to the increased globalization of economy. In fact, the increase of international trade and of the competition between countries led multinational enterprises to redefine their production and supply strategies towards a fragmentation of the production phases in many different countries. Accordingly, it is more and more difficult for consumers to identify the exact origin of many products. This phenomenon has given rise to the so-called hybrid products, i.e. goods coming from two or more countries that may not include the country where the company headquarters are located. Consequently, COO has been split up in many different taxonomies such as country of design (COD), country of parts (COP) and country of assembly (COA), country of brand (COB) and country of manufacture (COM) (Pharr, 2005). In this study research I will consider Country of brand (COB) because I am interested in testing persons’ knowledge and familiarity with the country from which a brand comes. This is because such concept is strongly related with the image of a country, a very important topic for my thesis. The Country of origin (COO) effect concept, as a variable able to influence consumer’s decisional processes while purchasing a product has been arousing strong interest since the ‘70s. Specifically, COO influence on the perception and evaluation of a brand has been one of the most widely studied phenomena in the literature of international negotiation, marketing and consumer behaviour during the last three decades (Martin, Lee, & Lacey, 2011). Until some years ago, in most COO researches, this phenomenon was assumed as a conscious and controlled cognitive process. In such procedure, consumers are likely to consider any COO cues as relevant information and, accordingly, employ such information to make the evaluation of a product (Liu & Johnson, 2005). Indeed, as Herz and Diamantopoulos (2013) argued, consumers were usually conceived as cognitive and rational decision makers. However, recent researches (Liu & Johnson 2005; Martin et al. 2011) have