Jean-Claude Usunier and Ghislaine Cestre
Executive Summary
Usunier and Cestre investigate the associations consumers make between products and countries. In an increasingly global arena, country of origin (COO) is progressively blurred as products are designed, manufactured, and branded in more than one place; often, several countries are simultaneously recognized as legitimate homes to particular products. In contrast to traditional COO research, which uses multiple stimuli, this research uses one stimulus (either product or country) and avoids forcing respondents to evaluative tasks when they possibly have little basis for such evaluation. The authors propose definitions and measurements for product–country and country–product associations, product ethnicity, and context-centered association tendencies.
Usunier and Cestre conduct surveys in nine countries, representing both industrialized and developing economies and both individualist and collectivist cultures over four continents. The basic task for the 1000-plus respondents consists of associating countries with products or products with countries. The authors show the role of brand, manufacturing, and design—brand being the predominant factor—in shaping product–country associations by eliciting respondent reaction to the coherence of predefined product–country combinations for each factor. Consumer product familiarity, product involvement, and country familiarity also emerge as key factors in determining the strength of product–country associations. Consumers from individualist, developed countries tend to associate products more strongly with their own country than do consumers from collectivist, developing countries. Finally, willingness to buy particular products is strongly related to the congruence between product ethnicity and COO.
Usunier and Cestre's findings confirm the importance of brand, manufacturing, and design in shaping product–country associations. Data should be collected to assess associations in each national market rather than inferring them from seemingly well-established stereotypes that may not be backed by evidence. Managers need to understand these underlying dimensions and the anchor points they represent in consumers' minds to make appropriate decisions. If inadequate, manufacturing origin should be downplayed. In the case of strong global product ethnicity ("ethnic products"), companies should develop full congruence between the origin that consumers infer and product ethnicity. Branding is the key ingredient for such congruence because the brand name can evoke the origin through linguistic inference. Origin strategies can be applied consistently worldwide for ethnic products because the association is globally shared. It is also important for managers to recognize regional disparities in product ethnicity. For low levels of product ethnicity ("neutral products"), local market characteristics should be considered carefully. In countries with strong context-centered association tendencies, a neutral product should be locally or neutrally branded.
Biography
Jean-Claude Usunier is a graduate of HEC (Paris) with a major in international business. He holds a master's degree in International Law and an MA in Economics from the University of Paris. He obtained his PhD in International Economics from the University of Paris. His areas of interest are cross-cultural consumer behavior, cultural aspects of international marketing, marketing and technology, and international business negotiations. He has consulted with industrial companies and large consumer goods companies. He is currently working on how information technologies affect market relationships, especially electronic versus human interaction, decentralized (peer-to-peer) exchanges, and online reputation systems. Recent publications have appeared in Management International Review, European Management Review, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Time and Society, and Journal of Research in Personality.
Ghislaine Cestre holds a BA and an MA from Laval University, Quebec, and an MBA from McGill University, Montreal. She obtained her PhD in Marketing from McGill University. Her areas of interest are consumer behavior, new product diffusion, and ethics. She has consulted with large consumer goods companies, such as Nestlé, Procter & Gamble and L'Oréal. She has published in International Journal of Research in Marketing and Journal of Research in Personality. She is currently working on consumer reactions to changes in product line management.
Journal of International Marketing, Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2007
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