원산지와 브랜드 이미지가 한국과 중국 소비자의 제품 평가에 미치는 영향에 관한 비교 연구

Many consumers have difficulty in choosing multi-national products due to the lack of information about the products. In this situation, consumers have usually considered the proxy indicators to evaluate the quality of products. Especially, extrinsic informational cues such as country-of-origin and brand image have been frequently referred by consumers. Although the previous studies on the country-of-origin effect and brand image effect have been presented in international business and marketing area, most studies have dealt with the country-of-origin effect and brand image effect separately. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate how the effects of country-of-origin and brand image interact each other and what differences happen on the product evaluation between Korean and Chinese when the products are made globally. We chose PC as the target product for this study and collected data from survey to Korean and Chinese university students. We also chose two PC brands, Samsung and Lenovo because they are the best well-known PC brand companies in Korea and China. The PC brand evaluations by consumers were measured by well-known multi-attribute scales that had been used in the previous studies for the country-of-origin effect, and tested for reliability and validity. The survey asked the respondents to evaluate the combinations of two brands(Samsung and Lenovo) and five countries(USA, Japan, Korea, China and Malaysia) with the 13 descriptors which were offered for consumers' product evaluation. The survey results show that Korean and Chinese consumers very differently evaluate the PC products with various combinations of country-of-origin and brand image. Based on these results, we suggest that global marketers and practitioners should understand the differences between Korean and Chinese consumers in evaluating products with various combinations of country-of-origin and brand image.