Country Of Origin Case Study

2.1.2 Brand Origin

1) COB

Ozsomer and Cavusgil (1991) point out that the country of origin is the country, where corporate headquarters of the company marketing the product or brand is located. This country is called the home country.

Thakor and Kohli (1996) made a conceptual contribution to the COO literature (Dinnie, 2004). They find the concept of brand origin and its distinction from original country-of-origin concept. The authors define brand origin as the place, region or country to which the brand is perceived to belong by its target consumers. Thakor and Kohli also note that this perception may differ from the location where products carrying the brand name are manufactured, or are perceived by consumers to be manufactured.

After

Roth and Romeo (1992) investigate COO image in association with product categories and define it as consumers’ understanding of a country that is based upon their prior perceptions of the strengths, weaknesses of the production and marketing of the product from that country.

COO image plays a significant role in consumers’ perceptions toward products and brands from a given country (Bilkey and Nes, 1982; Johansson et al., 1985; Samiee, 1994; Ahmed and d'Astous, 2006), which further affects purchase intention (Roth and Romeo, 1992; Papadopoulos and Heslop, 2014). Hsieh et al. (2004) also point out that consumers’ brand purchase intention could be significantly influenced by their attitudes towards COO image. Pappu et al. (2007) demonstrate that consumers could transfer country of origin image from one product category which is familiar with to a less familiar

Papadopoulos (1993) considers COO effects as the process of how the origin of imported products would affect consumers’ perceptions of a product and their evaluation of its attributes. Chinen et al. (2000) indicate that the COO effect is the information that consumers rely on to evaluate the quality of products from various countries and decide whether to purchases products or not. In this manner, COO has an impact on purchase intensions and buying behaviors of consumers. Wang and Lamb (1983) define COO effects as intangible barriers for entering new foreign markets in the form of negative consumer biases toward imported