amj Australasian Marketing Journal - ANZMAC

leather wallets and knit polo shirts (Wall et al., 1989); PCs and
VCRs (Hong and Wyer, 1989); and blouses and dress shirts
(Ettenson et al., 1988). For complex, infrequently purchased
items, the origin country appears to have a significant impact
on product evaluation in a multi-cue context (Han and
Terpstra, 1988; Heslop et al., 1987, Iyer and Kalita, 1997),
while that effect seems to be smaller for such items as wearing
apparel (Ettenson et al., 1988; Heslop et al., 1987). Chao s
(1989) study also demonstrates the importance of product and
attribute specificity on the evaluation of products.
3. The present study
The study reported herein seeks to extend the existing
research in the COO field by seeking to examine explicitly the
differential effects of COA and COD in combination with
other potentially important product cues, namely, brand and
price. It also seeks to explore the impact of these product cues
on two important dependent variables, namely, perceived
product quality and expressed purchase intention.
This study has been conducted on three types of products- car
(as a high-involvement product), a pair of jeans (a mediuminvolvement
product) and tinned pineapple (a low-involvement
product). The present research examines the effects of
COA and COD, individually and jointly, on the perceived
quality of cars, jeans and tinned pineapple and on reported
purchase intentions. In a previous study, Chao (1993) found
that there was no significant interaction effect between COD
and COA. He also reported significant price and COD main
effects on the perception of design quality. Amongst the
multi-cue studies published it has been commonly shown that
the effect of country image declines when information about
other product attributes is available to consumers. This result
leads to the present objective, viz to extend the study of COO
effects to take account of possible variations in the COD and
COA and see how the Australian consumers use these cues,
alongside other cues of brand and price in their judgment of
the quality of products and their choice of products. It is
expected that the presence of other factors such as brand and
price will reduce the effect of COA and COD in determining
the quality of a product. More specifically, it is anticipated the
effects of both COA and COD would be less than the effects
of other variables.
Thus, the study reported herein seeks to examine explicitly
the differential impact of a range of key variables, namely
COA and COD; price; branding; across three product categories;
in terms of both quality perceptions and purchase
intentions.
For this study, the following two hypotheses were tested, viz:
H1:That COA, COD, brand and price are all significantly
associated with perceived product quality, and
H2:COA, COD, brand and price are all significantly associated
with expressed purchase intentions.
Country Design and Assembly
4. Research design
The study is exploratory in nature and based on a survey of
consumers in Sydney, Australia. The methodology chosen in
this study to estimate the impact of COA and COD, brand and
price was conjoint analysis, as this technique seems ideally
suited to the variety of multiple product attributes and potentially
complex decision processes. In this study, the approach
chosen was a full-profile conjoint analysis . The procedure is
similar to that of an experimental design with repeated measures
(Louviere, 1988). A set of product profiles (short product
descriptions) was constructed by combining the attributes in a
factorial manner generated by the SPSS Categories software.
The subjects are asked to rate quality perceptions using a
seven-point rating scale (extremely good/extremely poor),
and purchase intentions in a five-point scale (definitely
buy/definitely not buy). Hence the technique of direct evaluation
of each profile was employed. This type of scale is typical
for conjoint analysis tasks (Green and Tull, 1978).
Table I displays the study design. Three product categories are
considered: car, jeans, and tinned pineapples. These products
were chosen as they were both representative of high-, medium-
and low-involvement products and were also familiar
products to the respondents. The attributes were chosen to satisfy
the research objectives. In the case of the car, three brands
with similar features were chosen, viz. Toyota Starlet, Ford
Festiva and Hyundai Excel. For jeans, the three brands chosen
were Levi s, Jag and Giordano. In the case of tinned pineapple 3 ,
Del Monte, SPC, and Kara were the three brands. Three countries-of-assembly
and three countries of design were chosen
namely, Japan, Australia and South Korea for cars, the U.S.A.,
Australia and South Korea for jeans; and Japan, Australia and
the Philippines for pineapple Three price levels have been
incorporated in the conjoint model: viz. the regular price of the
product and two other price levels, respectively 20% less and
20% more than the regular price. The price differential of +/-
20% was applied in the expectation that it was greater than the
just noticeable difference . At levels less than 20%, the danger
was that the price differentials might not be a material consideration.
All the brand names, countries-of-origin and countriesof-design
and price levels were chosen according to the particular
market conditions that prevailed in Australia at the time of
designing the research.
A set of product profiles was created by each possible combination
of attributes, resulting in a 3x3x3x3 full factorial
design with a total set of 81 profiles. In order to make the
profile evaluation task easier for the respondents, a fractional
factorial plan for three product categories was considered.
The SPSS Categories software generated this fractional
design 4 . Subjects, therefore, only had to evaluate nine profiles
for the main effect and four for the hold out tests of validity
of the model. The fractional design was constructed so that
the interaction effects of interest could be estimated. The data
collection process was executed in two phases, viz., a pilot
Australasian Marketing Journal 9 (1), 2001 63