amj Australasian Marketing Journal - ANZMAC

much greater than is the case for jeans and pineapple.
However, for other products the effect of price is significant
in relation to purchase intentions and quality perceptions but
it is ranked as the least important of the factors studied.
It is evident from this research that in a multi-cue situation,
the country effect is still important as this study reported that
COA is the most important factor and COD is also significantly
important in purchase intentions for high involvement
products. These results support Johansson and Nebenzahl s
(1986) results in relation to car manufacture. Brand and price,
as other information cues, are important though they are not
as salient as COA. This result is also similar to the findings of
Han and Terpstra (1988) in which they reported that sourcing
country stimuli had a more powerful effect than brand name
on consumer evaluations of bi-nationally produced cars.
Further, it was found that consumers are not biased towards
the products of their home country.
For manufacturing companies, there are some important
implications. Most notably, COA is the most important of the
four cues studied and more important than brand and COD.
Thus, the choice of countries for manufacture will have an
important influence on consumers choice. Secondly, branding
is less important than COA. Thus, shifting production to
less developed countries to take advantage of their lower costs
(while retaining design and brand name) will typically
adversely affect consumers perceptions of quality and, ultimately,
their product choices. Thirdly, price is generally less
important than COA and COD (to a lesser extent) suggesting
that the cost advantage enjoyed by shifting to a less developed
country may not be sufficient incentive to secure the
consumers choice. While the case of cars was the exception,
a price 20% lower was sufficient to alter the consumers
choice criteria. This may suggest a greater reduction in
margin than the manufacturer may be willing to accept.
Collectively, these findings suggest that manufacturers might
need to reconsider their strategies of relocating the production
of their established brands and products to lower-cost countries.
The evidence suggests that consumers don t buy it .
7. Future Research
Although the country of origin field is, by now, extensively
explored in the literature, these results demonstrate that the
field still has important findings yet to be revealed. From a
research perspective, the present study suggests a number of
potentially fruitful research directions.
Firstly, the complex combination of cues in this study
suggests that the simple single cue (ie country of origin) studies,
typical of past research, are no longer sufficient.
However, the use and interpretation of conjoint analysis in
this study, equally implies that all customers will employ
complex compensatory decision rules in their actual
purchases. This, of course, cannot be safely assumed and thus
a future stream of research could examine the interplay of
multi-attribute cues and the array of compensatory and noncompensatory
decision-making regimes.
Secondly, the five cues studied herein (ie product, brand,
price, COA and COD) are, themselves, a simplified abstraction.
Other potentially important cues were, of necessity,
excluded from the present study (largely as a result of the
constraints of the conjoint design). Notable amongst these is
product design which, especially in the case of some
socially conspicuous products such as cars and fashion
clothing, it could be expected would play a very important
role in buyers decision-making. Would buyers trade off
concerns about COA and COD if the product was more attractively
designed? This can only be answered empirically in
future research.
Following this argument, a variable which has recently
assumed prominence in the Australian context is that of
country of ownership . This is a reflection of the perceived
high degree of foreign ownership among the Australian manufacturing
industry. 5 Future research could therefore include
country of ownership as another extrinsic product cue in
countries where the issue of foreign ownership is topical.
Finally, the implications of this research for advertising
campaigns which stress either COD and/or COA need to be
carefully designed to reflect the often complex interaction of
these, and other, marketing mix cues. In such an environment,
careful specification of the advertising campaign objectives
and teasing out the impact of such campaigns remains a
challenging issue for both marketing managers and
researchers.
References
Country Design and Assembly
Ahmed, S. A., d Astous, A., 1996. Country-of-origin and
brand effects: A multi-dimensional and multi-attribute study.
Journal of International Consumer Marketing 9 (2), 93-115.
3
In the case of Design and Assembly of Pineapples , this issue
presented a challenge when designing the questionnaire as the authors
wished to stay focussed on the design and assembly distinction of
Chao and others and yet, patently, design of pineapple is a nonsensical
concept. For this reason, the terminology as Design and idea
first developed in .. was employed. The equivalent of design for
food and other consumer non-durables (drink, cleaning products,
chemicals etc) remains a problem for the authors and future
researchers. Additionally, for food products, concern for hygiene and
safety potentially represents a new set of salient product attributes,
especially in the contemporary concerns with foot and mouth and
mad cow diseases.
5
Prominent Australian businessman, Dick Smith has recently launched
an extensive range of grocery products with this issue used explicitly
as the core of his value proposition .
Australasian Marketing Journal 9 (1), 2001 71