Country Of Origin

Consumers are now exposed to different kinds of products and services which are from foreign nations because of extensive liberalization and globalization in the 21st century. Raising level of education and technological advancement have made consumer aware of the products and services available in the world. Thus country of origin of the product is influencing the purchase decision which requires better addressing of marketing strategies and plans by companies of both domestic and international origin (Kaynak et al. 2000). Important factors that affect consumers’ purchase intentions are consumer ethnocentrism and information about the foreign products. Therefore, this paper studies the relationship among Country of origin, Purchase Intention,

This image is created by variables such as representative products, national characteristics, economic and political background, history, and traditions.” The country of origin of a product has been defined as “the country of manufacture or assembly” identified by the “made in” or “manufactured in” labels (Ahmed et al. 2004). However the growth of process innovation and emergence of hybrid products: comprising different components sourced from many countries, have blurred the accuracy or validity of “made in” or “manufactured in” labels (Baker and Michie, 1995), making the identification of country of origin difficult. Given the difficulty in perception associated with country of origin, it is worthwhile to seek understanding of cognitive patterns, among consumers and explore the inter-relations among product information, ethnocentrism and purchase

Previous research showed that consumers’ perceptions of products made in western countries (or more developed countries) are of better quality compared to those made in less developed (or developing) countries (Bilkey and Nes, 1982). Li and Wyer (1994) stated that purchasing decisions of high-involvement products are more elaborate, and thus the country of origin factor comes in; apart from other factors like price, quality, brand and appearance. Influence of country of origin should be higher when considering high-involvement products rather than for low -involvement products.

The country of origin acts as an information cue for consumers which inform about the location where the product was produced. Both empirical observations and experiments indicate that country of origin has a considerable influence on the quality perceptions of a product (Bilkey and Nes, 1982). There are some contradictory findings even though majority of the studies support the impact of country image in evaluation of the products. Country image affects consumers' ratings on only certain product attributes, not the overall evaluations of the products. (Johansson et al.,