Country‐of‐origin and brand redeployment impact after brand acquisition

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to examine the country‐of‐origin's impact on consumer purchase behavior post‐acquisition, especially when the acquirer‐dominant business is afflicted by a low country‐of‐origin image and the acquired business enjoys a high country‐of‐origin image. This study also aims to examine brand redeployment strategy impacts on consumer purchase intentions.

Design/methodology/approach

Data are collected from an online questionnaire in Taiwan. A total of 325 usable questionnaires are returned. Data analysis is conducted using regress analysis and ANOVA.

Findings

These results indicate that general country attributes and general product attributes have a positive effect on purchase intentions. In addition, general product attributes play a mediating role between general country attributes and purchase intentions. These results further show that target‐dominant redeployment strategy is the most powerful to purchase intentions. A company which wants to use M&A to increase market share must seriously consider general country attributes, general product attributes and brand redeployment strategy because these three constructs affect purchase intentions, and consequently maintain consumer loyalty and attract new customers.

Originality/value

There were seldom studies which investigated country‐of‐image effect and M&A from marketing perspective. The major contributions of the study were investigating consumers' perception of the effects on country‐of‐origin image and the redeployment strategy on an acquired brand.

Citation

Lee, H. and Lee, C. (2011), "Country‐of‐origin and brand redeployment impact after brand acquisition", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 28 No. 6, pp. 412-420. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363761111165921