The Moderating Role of Product Category and Customer Knowledge in Country of Origin Effect by Brand and Manufacturing

Business environment has been rapidly changing due to globalization. Recently, FTA negotiation among various countries newly draw the importance of country of origin. Country of origin concept was introduced as an extension of country image. Previous studies found that country of origin work as a salient cue in buyer’s perceived quality. It also has been found for country of origin effect to have an important role in consumer purchasing decisions. Not only country of origin by brand but also country of origin by manufacturing appear to affect product evaluation. And country of origin may serve as a proxy variable when quantity of information is not fluent. Based on the previous studies, the purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of country of origin on product evaluation both by brand and by manufacturing. Additionally the moderating role of product knowledge and product category will be analyzed. In this study, the authors divided the country of origin concept into two category based on the literature review. That is country image of brand and country image of manufacturing. It should be noticed that two country image (favorable/unfavorable), product categories (high/low involvement), consumer knowledge (high/low) affect product evaluation. As expected, country of origin effect appeared differently by combination of country of origin. Conclusively, customers evaluated the product best when both country of origin by brand and country of origin by manufacturing image are favorable. And favorable country of origin by brand and unfavorable country of origin by manufacturing, unfavorable country of origin by brand and favorable country of origin by manufacturing and unfavorable country of origin by brand and unfavorable country of origin by manufacturing are in order in product evaluation. But the hypothesis on moderating role of product knowledge and product category (product involvement) are not supported