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While country image consists of two hierarchical images – macro country image at the country level and micro country image at the specific product level – previous studies have largely failed to detail its varying effects by product category and by the level of a country’s economic development. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the macro and micro country images of four countries (USA, Italy, Korea, and Malaysia) on Saudi consumers’ purchase intentions in two product categories (symbolic and functional product).

Data were collected from shoppers older than 20 years of age at several shopping malls in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia via mall intercept method.

Analyses of 496 data revealed that the effects of macro and micro country images differ by product category. In particular, both macro and micro country images were equally relevant to the purchase intention of symbolic goods (i.e. handbags), while micro country image played a greater role in the purchase intention of functional goods (i.e. cell phones). A partial country moderating effect was found. The effects of micro country image on the purchase intention of handbags were valid only in Italy, where product-country match is high.

This study advances country image research by highlighting how the effects of macro and micro country images on purchase intention differ by product category and by country. The findings suggest which aspect of country image (i.e. macro vs micro) should be actively communicated in the marketing of symbolic and functional goods.

Built on the prototype and cue theories, the purpose of this study is to understand how a country's prototypical brand, a corporate brand that most consumers associate with a country (e.g. Samsung), contributes to forming two dimensions of country image – overall country image (i.e. macro country image) and product-specific country image (i.e. micro country image) – and how country image impacts the product quality evaluations of Korean cosmetics, along with the moderating effect of national culture.

Data were collected from 491 US and Chinese consumers ages 20 and older and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The findings confirmed the positive influence of prototypical brand image on macro and micro country image. Macro country image also had a positive effect on micro country image. However, only micro country image yielded a positive influence on the quality evaluations of Korean cosmetics. Analyses of the moderating effect of national culture showed that the positive influence of prototypical brand image on macro and micro country image was found to be stronger in China than in the US.

These findings provided new theoretical perspectives for country image studies, and practical insights for companies and governments, especially those in countries whose country image is less distinctive, to help develop effective marketing strategies.

Previous research has posited country image to operate at two levels: the country’s macro image, based on general politico-economic descriptors of the country, and the country’s micro image, based on perceptions of products from the country. The purpose of this paper is to further explore this premise in a practical study, using a psychometric assessment of macro and micro country images by ascertaining the nature of differences in macro and micro images of leading exporters, the USA and China, for consumers in Malaysia, a top import destination of US and Chinese goods; the images of Malaysian goods were similarly assessed.

The study used a systematic sample, with questionnaires distributed to adult respondents using a street intercept. Interviewers asked every other passer-by to fill out a questionnaire, and stood in close proximity to address any questions from respondents. The study hypothesized that there is a significant difference between country macro and micro image, respectively for the USA, China and Malaysia, and that there is significant relationship between country macro image and country micro image in each country, respectively, USA, China and Malaysia.

The study found support for the reliability of existing country micro and macro image measures, and further refined them for increased validity. The study compared between the countries and found significant differences on both macro and micro dimensions of country image. The US scored highest on technological research, high quality products, standards of living, labor costs, welfare system, industrialization, civilian government, development, literacy, free-market system and democracy, followed by China on technological research, industrialization, development and free-market system, with Malaysia scoring higher on product quality, labor costs, welfare system, civilian government is civilian/non-military, literacy, free-market system and democracy.

A broader study of countries that share geopolitical and cultural similarities might offer additional insights into country macro and micro image.

The study cautions marketers to assess the acceptance of their products in the context of their country’s macro and micro image perceptions in target markets, and steer those perceptions in a manner that would be beneficial to their marketing efforts.

The conceptualization of the macro and micro aspects of country image has been one of the less studied dimensions of country image. This study is the first to address these dimensions from an emerging-market perspective, suggesting that, at the macro level, country perceptions regarding technology, economy, and politics contribute to an overall impression of the country, which would then influence the desirability of its products originating there. For the micro country image, products from countries perceived as innovative, excelling in product design, and producing prestigious products, are likely to be perceived as desirable.

It is critical to understand how global consumers evaluate the quality of Asian products while marketing Asian products in the global marketplaces. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of Korea’s macro and micro country image and global consumers’ materialism level on the quality evaluation of Korean cosmetics among consumers in four countries.

Data from 900 participants were collected from consumers aged 20 or older living in economically developed countries (the USA and France) and economically developing countries (China and Vietnam) via professional online survey firms. Multiple regression analyses were used to analyze the data.

Along with the direct effect of macro and micro country image and materialism on product quality evaluation, a moderating effect of materialism and the respective country was discovered. Subsequently, the effect of macro country image on quality evaluation was found to be only significant in the USA and France and not in China and Vietnam. In contrast, the impact of micro country image was robust across all four countries. Furthermore, the effect of materialism on product quality was significant only in Vietnam. This implies that materialistic consumers in emerging markets might have favorable perceptions regarding the quality of Korean cosmetics.

This study advances country image research by providing new theoretical and managerial implications for countries whose image is less distinctive with respect to the effective marketing of products by the destination countries’ development status and consumers’ familiarity.

To extend the understanding of country image to the country whose image is less distinctive, the purpose of this paper is to examine two salient factors: one country’s prototypical brand and its cultural influence (i.e. Korean Wave) on shaping the country’s image in the context of Korea and its subsequent impact on product evaluation and purchase intention. Built on the prototype and schema theories, a research framework is proposed and empirically tested on two product categories (cosmetics and tires).

Data were collected from US consumers ages 20 and older and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The findings largely supported the proposed framework with two additional paths (Korean Wave to product quality and Korean Wave to purchase intention). In both product categories, the findings confirmed that the image transfers from the prototypical brands (e.g. Samsung) to the country image (i.e., Korea), from Korean Wave to country image, and from the macro country image to the micro country image. The influence of the prototypical brand image was greater than that of the Korean Wave. However, some differences were found across product categories; the positive impact of the macro image on product quality evaluation was supported only for tires, not in the case of the cosmetics. The path from the Korean Wave to product quality evaluation was significant only for the cosmetics, and not for the tires.

These findings provided new theoretical perspectives for country image studies, and practical insights for companies, especially in countries whose image is less distinctive, to help develop effective marketing strategies in different product categories.

Filling a gap in extant research regarding the measurement of an export country's environmental image and investigating its importance for consumers' evaluation of an environmentally differentiated imported product.

Online surveys carried out in Denmark (Study 1), Germany and France (Study 2; N˜500 from each country). In Study 1, we develop an environmental country image instrument and investigate its nomological validity vis-à-vis other country image constructs and Danish consumers' evaluation of organic milk from Germany. In Study 2, we validate the instrument with consumers from Germany and France, evaluating organic milk from Denmark.

Consumers differentiate between a country's environmental image and its general and production-related images. The country's environmental image is important to consumers' evaluation of an environmentally differentiated product from the country. Specifically, we find that a country's environmental image strongly influences its product-specific images and, through these, the consumer's evaluation of an organic food product from the country.

Consumers' use of a country's environmental image as a cue to the credibility of environmental claims gives competitive advantages to exporters from countries with a favorable environmental image, while exporters from countries with an unfavorable environmental image need measures to compensate. Companies and countries should monitor how the environmental image of their country evolves in important markets and be ready to act when facing damages to their country's environmental image.

This article is the first to propose a measure of environmental country image and to document that consumers use the environmental image of an exporting country to assess environmental claims on imported products.

This paper aims to provide an integrative review on nation branding literature and to identify new avenues for future research on embedding nation equity into commercial brands.

Integrative review and analysis with conceptual development and future research directions.

The authors firstly identify conceptualizations and measurements of nation brand as national identity and as national image. Consistently, three theoretical perspectives investigating nation branding were given: first, the macro view focusing on nation brand broadly as political and cultural identity; second, the micro view focusing on nation brand as a country image; and finally, the integrative view using the emerging construct of nation equity. Inspired by the last theoretical view, the authors discuss four research foci that examine nation equity in commercial brands for future research.

The paper provides an integrative understanding of nation branding and identifies novel research opportunities to study this research field – building the connection between nations and commercial brands through nation equity.

This chapter sheds light on the ‘country of origin’ concept. The author contends that this concept is composed of micro- and macro-components. He argues that the tourists’ hedonic and monetary gratifications are derived from the travel experiences. Therefore, the country-of-origin image (COI) can have an impact on the destination’s brand extension. In this light, this contribution examines the relationship among COI, overall brand equity and brand extension. The author implies that the hedonic and monetary values can have a moderating effect on the impact of COI and on destination brand extension.

Consumers' evaluations of brand extensions have gained considerable attention in the marketing literature. The purpose of this study is to investigate how a brand's perceived global or local origin impacts evaluations of brand extensions and creates transfer effects of brand meaning. The paper conceptually characterizes the transference process and empirically tests the nature and extent of spillover effects of origin associations across multiple parent brands and extensions.

For the empirical testing of the conceptual model of transfer effects of origin associations we undertook a cross‐sectional consumer survey amongst a sample of 267 Norwegian respondents. Structural equation modelling was used to investigate the causal relationships between the latent exogenous and endogenous variables in the conceptual model.

The present study indicates that the global and local origin framework, first introduced by Steenkamp et al. in 2003, can explain the occurrence of reciprocal transfer of brand meaning across parent brands and extensions. The paper shows that global and local origin associations operate in a manner very similar to brand associations in the transference of perceptions. It finds that distinct origin associations influence the pre‐brand image and drive the forward effect on the attitude towards the extension as well as the subsequent backward effect upon the post‐brand image of the parent brand.

This paper reveals for the first time that distinct origin associations can initiate spillover effects across parent brands and extensions. This study is therefore an important step towards the generalizability of main brand extension studies to other contexts such as extensions of global brands.

This study aims to develop a theoretical concept by examining the country image effects on luxury value perception, a matter past studies have overlooked. Multiple facets of country image, cognitive and affective dimensions, have been developed to evaluate perceived luxury value and purchase intention. However, no prior studies have considered all the types of perceived luxury values: utilitarian value, hedonic value, symbolic value and economic value, considered in relation to cognitive and affective country image in an emerging country’s market. Accordingly, this study has attempted to explore the ways Thai luxury consumers perceive the image of the country and the influence of the perceived value of Thai luxury brands, to learn which country attributes strengthen the luxury brand’s value and customers’ purchase intention.

A total of 407 Thai respondents, who were luxury-product consumers who knew and previously had bought either Thai luxury brands or global luxury brands, comprised the final sample examined. Structural Equation Modeling was employed in this research to test the research hypotheses. The structural model proposed a causal relationship between two endogenous constructs, cognitive and affective country images, and five exogenous constructs: utilitarian value, hedonic value, symbolic value, economic value and purchase intention.

The findings confirmed that countries are like brands in that the perceived image of each country’s aspects, cognitive and affective, influences the perceived value in each dimension differently, and so affects purchase intention. This implies that the evaluation of perceived quality or perceived value for money, as in past studies, cannot accurately demonstrate what particular benefits consumers receive when they utilize the country-image cue. Country image has both symbolic and emotional significances for consumers. The findings have provided a more precise measure of the effects of country image as well as important information on country positioning the in the world market.

There are some limitations in this study. The reliance on Thai samples from one city has limited the generalizability of the findings. Moreover, this study considered only one country of brand origin, and only one product category has been chosen as the stimulus, which together are the major limitations of this study. Future research could also consider further testing country image effects on value perception with other extrinsic attributes, rather than using a single cue, as this study did. Additionally, antecedent variables that may have an influence on country-image effects should be considered in future studies.

The relation of country image and value perception could help both governments and companies support their national brands more effectively, or to export products in accordance with the image aspect that most strongly impacts consumers’ positive perception of value. Moreover, it would be valuable for companies producing luxury products to know which country attributes strengthen the brand’s value. Luxury-brand managers will have to take these aspects into consideration when developing their communications strategies (Krupka et al., 2014).

There is a lack of research as regards the impact of a brand name’s perceived origin on the luxury perception associated with that brand (Salciuviene et al., 2010). This research is the first to investigate the theoretical framework of luxury value perception found in relation to cognitive and affective country images. From an academic perspective, this study sought to increase the theoretical research relating to the ambiguous conceptualization of the country-image effect on consumers’ perception of value in luxury products. Additionally, the relation of country image to luxury value perception could help both governments and companies support their national luxury brands more effectively, or to export luxury products in accordance with the image aspect that most strongly impacts consumers’ positive perception of value.