Country Images:Why They Influence Consumers

Wines from Chile, oranges from Spain, autos from Germany and rock stars from the USA. What makes them special? This chapter examines the impact of the country of origin of products on consumers’ product evaluations. The relevance of this topic was recognized as long ago as the 1960s in one of the earliest papers on international consumer marketing (Dichter 1962), which argued that a product’s country of origin may have a “tremendous influence on the acceptance and success of products” (p. 116). A review by Verlegh and Steenkamp (1999) further supports the importance of country-of-origin effects on consumer behavior. Unlike academic relevance, the practical relevance of country of origin has not gone undisputed. Kenichi Ohmae, for example, asserted that consumers “don’t care about country of origin … [and] don’t worry about where the product was made” (Ohmae 1989, p. 144). More recently, this concern was echoed by Usunier (2006), who argued that the large amount of academic interest in country-of-origin effects does not reflect the limited relevance of this concept for consumers and companies. Usunier argues that country-of-origin research thus provides an excellent illustration of the “relevance gap” that characterizes much of today’s research on management. In this chapter, I shall discuss the background of country-of-origin effects, and demonstrate their practical relevance to the academic and business audience.