Leonidou et al. 2006 EJM.pdf

marketing mix – “external product/features”, “internal product/technology”, “productquality aspects”, “pricing considerations”, “distribution/service”, and “promotionalissues” – with each group containing four items (see Table III). To establish thereliability and validity of the scales constructed, confirmatory factor analysis, usingthe EQS program, was undertaken (see Table IV). Both the likelihood Chi-squarestatistic and the alternative fit indices revealed values within the commonly acceptedcritical levels. Construct reliability was acceptable, because the Cronbah’s alphacoefficients estimated for each construct exceeded .80 (Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994).Convergent validity was also satisfactory, because the factor loadings for all itemscomprising each construct exceeded 0.75, while the t-value for each item was greaterthan 15.0 (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988).US versusChinese goods803Analysis and discussionThis section analyzes and discusses the results with regard to each of the threeresearch hypotheses. In order to carry out the statistical analysis, compound scores foreach of the six groups of product cues were calculated, based on the average of theitems contained in each group. Differences among the means of consumer evaluationsat the five levels of analysis, as well as among the six categories of product cues, wereconducted using the ANOVA test, while to trace the source of potential differences, theScheffé’s test was employed (at a ¼ 0:05). Finally, comparisons of British consumers’evaluations of US versus Chinese goods were tested using the student-t formatched-paired samples[9].Testing hypotheses H1a and H1bBritish consumer perceptions of goods made in the USA exhibited statisticallysignificant variations across all five levels of analysis (see Table V – upper part). Thiswas true for each of the six groups of product cues, namely external product/features,internal/product technology, product quality aspects, pricing considerations,distribution/service, and promotional issues (all p’s , 0.01). The source of thesedifferences was mainly linked to the Whirpool brand, which was evaluated morefavorably by respondents compared to the country as a whole, its electrical appliancesindustry, and the refrigerators produced by US manufacturers. However, when aphotograph of the specific Whirpool model was shown to respondents, theirevaluations became less positive again compared to those expressed earlier for thebrand. Interestingly, there were no serious differences in consumer evaluations at thecountry, industry, and product level, indicating that consumers do not benefit from anyfurther information at a more specific level of analysis that would help them to havemore precise knowledge.A similar pattern was also observed in the case of British consumer evaluations ofChinese goods: there were only slight variations in their perceptions among country,industry, and product levels, for all categories of product cues (see Table V – lowerpart). However, when the Haier brand was revealed to consumers, their evaluationsseriously deteriorated, recording statistically significant differences when comparedwith perceptions of China as a whole, electrical appliances, and refrigerators (allps # 0.01). Surprisingly, when the photograph and more hands-on information aboutthe specific Haier model were disclosed, consumer evaluations became more favorableagain. This can be attributed to the fact that consumers had at their disposal more