Reflective versus unreflective country images: How ruminating on reasons for buying a country’s products alters country image

Based on the excitation-transfer model, this study considers how pondering on reasons for buying a particular country’s products influences country image (CI). We use an experimental approach to test our hypotheses and check for differences between unreflective/ad lib CI and reflective/reasoned CI measurements. The findings indicate differences between reflective and unreflective CI perceptions. These differences are more prominent for CI measurements relating to less well-known countries. Only a minority of consumers seem to knowingly buy a country’s products because of its reputation. Our research extends existing approaches to CI based only on country knowledge activation by incorporating the concept of motivational relevance and the applicability of activated knowledge. We also propose a segmentation scheme based on the motivational relevance of CI.