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Due to the intense rivalry in the smartphone market, manufacturers of mobile phones are becoming increasingly interested in knowing the factors that influence consumers' purchase intention. This paper aims to examine the effect of country-of-origin image, brand image and attitude towards the brand on the purchase intention of smartphone users.

An empirical study was performed based on the information gathered from smartphone users. The structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was applied to examine the hypotheses.

The authors found that brand image and attitude towards the brand significantly influence consumer purchase intention. Additionally, there is an indirect effect even when the nation of origin image does not directly influence the consumer's purchase intention. Indeed, brand image and attitude towards the brand act as a mediator between the country-of-origin image and purchase intention.

This study presents a conceptual model on the impact of country-of-origin image on the propensity of consumers to buy smartphones in a field where little research has been done. The investigation offers a consumer-focused analysis regarding the country-of-origin image. This suggests a significant shift from the current strategy, which is frequently centered on the viewpoint of the companies.

This study aims to draw on cue utilization and irradiation theories to: determine the extent to which country-of-origin image and its sub-dimensions exert an aggregate and relative influence on consumer brand evaluations; and identify the contextual and methodological factors that account for between-study variance in the focal relationship.

A random-effects model was used to examine 166 empirical articles encompassing 499,563 observations, and 282 effect sizes from 1984 to 2020 using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software.

Results show that country-of-origin image has a positive, moderate effect on consumer brand evaluations. Moreover, findings reveal that each dimension of country-of-origin image – general country image, general product country image, specific product country image and partitioned country image – significantly influences consumer brand evaluation, but the effect of general product country image is the largest. What’s more, the aggregate impacts of country-of-origin image on consumer brand evaluation – brand commitment, brand-specific associations and general brand impressions – show that the effect on brand commitment is the largest. Finally, findings show that contextual factors (brand source, product sector, culture [individualism vs collectivism], brand origin continents and respondents’ continent) and methodological factors (cues, sampling unit, publication year and sample size) significantly account for between-study variance.

This study provides the first meta-analytic review of the relationship between country-of-origin image and consumer brand evaluation to help clarify mixed findings and balance out the literature, which has only seen quantitative reviews on product evaluation and purchase decisions.

The purpose of this exploratory paper is to investigate and understand the most important factors that influence Arab-origin brands to go global and to appear in brand valuation studies.

Initially, content analysis on current literature has been conducted followed by qualitative research in the form of in-depth interviews with marketing experts that own or work for successful Arab-origin brands in Muslim countries. Data has been collected related to brands from Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. A total of 20 in-depth interviews have been conducted by using face-to-face/online voice recorded method. Interviews have been transcribed, coded and analyzed.

Findings revealed that the main factors affecting the global branding process for Arab-origin brands are internal as compared to external factors. Some of the factors are common with factors in current literature such as dealing with local competition, however, many new factors as well have been identified like brand essence/meaning, internal marketing, top management support and entering mature markets. Cultural heritage plays a significant role in the strategy, creativity and leadership related to building global brands in Arab/Islamic countries. A preliminary model has been proposed based on the findings.

This study is just a starting point for further research. The interaction and relationship between internal and external factors could be further investigated. For example, top management support can moderate the influence of local competition in global markets (Carpenter and Fredrickson, 2001). The proposed framework should be quantitatively measured across different brands for further analyzing the main factors that influence Arab/Islamic-origin brands to go global and generalizing findings. Furthermore, the role of each factor may differ from one industry to another. For example in service organizations, frontline employees are crucial to the success of the organization and challenging to standardize across global markets. Investigating the different combinations of strategy, creativity and leadership from one global market to another opens doors for further scholarly work in this area.

This is a pioneer study in attempting to understand the most relevant factors influencing Arab-origin brands to go global as compared to Western brands that are commonly researched in the literature. This study opens doors to further research related to Arab-origin brands globalization process as well as provides interesting insights to marketers and brand owners about the real reasons that may hinder and genuinely influence Arab-origin brands from taking their locally successful brands fully global.

Consumers’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) expectations have increased in the new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, while many financial institutions have supported society with their health-related CSR actions. This study examines the impact of CSR actions and brand origin on consumer attitudes, CSR perceptions, customer-based brand equity (CBBE) and supportive communication intent in retail banking during the crisis from signaling and stakeholder theory perspectives.

A 2 (foreign vs. local brand) x 2 (COVID-19-related vs. another CSR action) between-subjects factorial design was used to analyze consumer data.

CSR actions of local brands created more positive attitudes, CSR perceptions and greater CBBE and supportive communication intent than foreign banks. However, CSR action (COVID-19-related vs. another) did not significantly influence consumer attitudes, CSR perceptions, CBBE and supportive communication intent.

This research has shown the significant impact of brand origin on consumer perceptions in response to CSR actions during the pandemic. It has suggested an original conceptual framework and presented timely empirical findings for retail banking in the pandemic period, which can exemplify a crisis period shaped by uncertainty. Besides, it extended the previous literature by focusing on the interaction between brand origin and CSR actions in shaping consumers’ CSR and brand perceptions. It is among the first studies examining brand origin’s impact on supportive communication intent.

Country of origin is a well-studied topic for developed countries that have a favourable image. However, how country of origin image affects the consumers of an emerging country on a frontier market with high uncertainty avoidance still needs to be shed light. Therefore, this study investigated the relationship of country of origin image with consumer purchase intention through consumer uncertainty. The study further explored the conditional effect of brand image between country of origin and consumer uncertainty.

The data for this study was collected from 400 Pakistani consumers. As this study assessed purchase intentions and consumer uncertainty related to high technology products of China, therefore, the consumers of the Huawei brand were selected.

The findings revealed a negative influence of country of origin image on consumer purchase intentions both directly and indirectly through consumer uncertainty. Furthermore, the positive brand image of high tech products was found to moderate the effect of country of origin image on consumer uncertainty.

This study is the first of its kind that explores the intervening role of consumer uncertainty between country of origin image and consumer purchase intention in an emerging market. In addition, the study highlights the importance of strong brand image as it buffers consumer uncertainty because of stereotypes.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the internationalization characteristics of companies from an emerging market (internationalized company stage and presence of a sales subsidiary abroad) moderate the influence of country of brand origin positioning over the companies' financial performance.

The authors performed an ex-post-facto study of internationalized companies from Brazil spanning 16 years. Generalized estimating equations in panel data revealed the results with market share, return on assets (ROA) and Tobin's Q as dependent variables.

The result revealed that country of brand origin positioning is worth doing for internationalized companies from an emerging market, especially for multinationals with sales activity in the destination country. It positively affects all three financial metrics. For exporters, it is effective in increasing market share and returns on assets.

The research demonstrates the effectiveness of the image positioning of exporting and multinational companies that have internationalization initiatives and allocation of external sales activities.

In emerging markets, country of brand origin positioning is a branding strategy used by companies seeking to internationalize. This research shows that the contexts of the characteristics of internationalization strategies change the results, and therefore the need to be considered for testing the effectiveness of country-of-brand-origin positioning.

The purpose of this study shows the effect of the value of country of origin and brand image on the purchasing decision of South Korean skincare with halal product knowledge as a moderator variable.

The research method used is descriptive quantitative by analyzing the responses to questionnaires distributed to 212 respondents from all over Indonesia. Based on previous research, four hypotheses were built, and the collected data were processed using a path analysis tool through the SmartPLS 3.3.3 application.

The results showed that the country of origin and brand image variables had a significant effect on the purchasing decision of South Korean skincare with halal product knowledge as a moderator variable. Meanwhile, the halal product knowledge variable does not moderate the influence of country of origin and brand image on South Korean skincare purchasing decisions. This finding confirms that the halal product knowledge factor has not been sufficient to strengthen the influence of country of origin and brand image on South Korean skincare purchasing decisions.

To increase knowledge about Muslim halal in South Korea’s skincare purchasing decisions, the role of halal assurance institutions and South Korean and Indonesian skincare manufacturers is needed in optimizing halal certification and international agreements related to halal guarantees. In addition, halal cosmetics business actors in Indonesia and Korea must increase halal awareness of the products they sell through brand image and halal product knowledge so that they can convince and encourage Muslim consumers in making decisions to buy South Korean skincare in Indonesia.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to test country of origin and brand image on the decision to purchase South Korean skincare with halal product knowledge as a moderator variable. This study succeeded in revealing the strengths and weaknesses of the value of country of origin and brand image in influencing the purchasing decisions of South Korean skincare in Indonesia.

Many brands claim they were born by coincidence, yet the effects and contingencies of this communication strategy are little understood by extant marketing research on unexpected events. This study aims to investigate how consumers react to brand communications portraying a coincidental vs planned origin.

This research presents five experimental studies embedding coincidental brand origins into different types of marketing communications (i.e. crowdfunding campaigns, visual ads and brand biographies).

This research finds that coincidental brand origins increase persuasion (measured as money pledged to a crowdfunding campaign, overall brand equity and purchase intention) but only for consumers high in need for cognition (NFC). This effect is mediated by processing enjoyment, as the intrinsic need for thinking that characterizes high NFC consumers is satisfied by the opportunity to process the coincidence. Further to process, the authors show that explicitly providing an explanation for the coincidence makes the effect disappear, as this deprives high-NFC consumers of the opportunity to autonomously engage in and enjoy the cognitive process.

Brand managers able to leverage coincidences in their storytelling efforts should target high-NFC consumers and should not provide an explanation for the coincidences.

This research advances the limited literature on how consumers react to coincidences in a marketing context, the understanding of how brand communication strategies persuade consumers through information processing and the NFC literature.

This study aims to examine how cultural tightness at the national level and individual level influences consumer attitudes toward a brand's wrongdoing depending on the brand's country of origin and severity of the transgression.

Employing data from two tight-culture countries (China and South Korea) and a loose-culture country (the USA), two experiments were conducted to examine the proposed hypotheses.

The authors found that although consumers across cultures universally punish strong (vs weak) transgressions more severely, consumers in a tight-culture country, China, are more forgiving of a local (vs foreign) brand in both strong and weak transgression conditions, and forgiveness is higher for the strong transgression. Moreover, this buffering effect observed for Chinese consumers is stronger for those with high personal cultural tightness in the strong transgression condition. However, it emerges only in the weak transgression condition for South Korea, another tight-culture country. As hypothesized, no buffering effect for a local brand was found in a loose-culture country, the USA. Consumers from a loose culture assess transgression severity independently, and the punishment is harsher for strong transgressions than for weak transgressions.

This study fills a research gap by revealing that consumers from tight (vs loose) cultures would react differently to brands following a transgression depending on the brand's country of origin. It provides implications by examining how national-level and individual-level cultural tightness jointly affect post-transgression attitudes. It also presents a more nuanced perspective that the local brand's buffering effect is contingent on the degree of tightness and severity of transgression, even in similar culturally tight countries.

For a better understanding of the preferences and differences of young consumers in emerging wine markets, this study aims to propose a clustering method to segment the super-new generation wine consumers based on their sensitivity to wine brand, origin and price and then conduct user profiles for segmented consumer groups from the perspectives of demographic attributes, eating habits and wine sensory attribute preferences.

We first proposed a consumer clustering perspective based on their sensitivity to wine brand, origin and price and then conducted an adaptive density peak and label propagation layer-by-layer (ADPLP) clustering algorithm to segment consumers, which improved the issues of wrong centers' selection and inaccurate classification of remaining sample points for traditional DPC (DPeak clustering algorithm). Then, we built a consumer profile system from the perspectives of demographic attributes, eating habits and wine sensory attribute preferences for segmented consumer groups.

In this study, 10 typical public datasets and 6 basic test algorithms are used to evaluate the proposed method, and the results showed that the ADPLP algorithm was optimal or suboptimal on 10 datasets with accuracy above 0.78. The average improvement in accuracy over the base DPC algorithm is 0.184. As an outcome of the wine consumer profiles, sensitive consumers prefer wines with medium prices of 100–400 CNY and more personalized brands and origins, while casual consumers are fond of popular brands, popular origins and low prices within 50 CNY. The wine sensory attributes preferred by super-new generation consumers are red, semi-dry, semi-sweet, still, fresh tasting, fruity, floral and low acid.

Young Chinese consumers are the main driver of wine consumption in the future. This paper provides a tool for decision-makers and marketers to identify the preferences of young consumers quickly which is meaningful and helpful for wine marketing.

In this study, the ADPLP algorithm was introduced for the first time. Subsequently, the user profile label system was constructed for segmented consumers to highlight their characteristics and demand partiality from three aspects: demographic characteristics, consumers' eating habits and consumers' preferences for wine attributes. Moreover, the ADPLP algorithm can be considered for user profiles on other alcoholic products.