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The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether or not the strategy of pursuing a global brand identity by leading Asian firms will produce intended outcomes in consumer responses. For this purpose, the study empirically examines whether global Japanese brands (e.g. Toyota) are perceived as global or Japanese by consumers.

Surveys were conducted with Korean consumers for their evaluations of Japanese automobile brands with varying degrees of globalness. As for brands, the study divides Japanese brands into two groups – those with high brand globalness and those with low brand globalness – and to examine if Japanese-origin effects differ between these two groups.

In contrast to the hypothesis, global brands were found to be more subject to country-of-origin effects.

The findings contribute to research on consumer choices and brand globalness by showing country-of-origin effects for global brands.

The findings suggest that even when Asian firms emphasize the globalness of their brands, they may still need to attend to country-of-origin effects.

This study examines an unexplored issue of country-of-origin effects for global brands.

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 paper examines the differential effects of country‐of‐manufacture information on product beliefs and attitudes for brands with different levels of brand equity. Results show that when there is congruence between brand origin and country of manufacture (e.g. a Sony television that is made in Japan), the latter information has no significant effect on product beliefs and global product attitude. When country‐of‐manufacture information indicates that a branded product is made in a country with a less reputable image than that of the brand origin (e.g. a Sony television that is made in Mexico), the information produces more negative effects on product evaluations for low equity brands than high equity brands. These results can be attributed to two different perceptual processes through which incongruent country‐of‐manufacture information affects product evaluations for brands with different levels of brand equity.

Selected empirical findings on the effects of a product′s “made‐in” label are integrated with theoretical developments in consumer information processing and the economics of consumer search. The result is an internally consistent theory of how country‐of‐origin effects vary across situations, individuals and products. The new perspective explains why country stereotyping influences decisions more among well‐informed buyers and dismisses the idea that country‐of‐origin cues are necessarily misleading or bad. It also generates predictions of when country‐of‐origin effects are greater and when they are smaller.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how consumer ethnocentrism (CET) and cosmopolitanism (COS) may affect Asian consumers’ perceptions of out-group countries and their products, doing so by examining similar vs dissimilar countries across countries of origin. Given the strong inter-country rivalries that exist among Asian countries, the authors propose two alternative hypotheses, drawing from social identity theory and realistic group conflict theory.

To test the hypotheses, the authors examine consumer perceptions of both Western countries (dissimilar out-groups) and Asian countries (similar out-groups) within China (Study 1). In addition, the authors investigate how CET and COS affect consumer perceptions of Asian countries in Japan and in non-Asian dissimilar countries, and compare the effects between the two regions (Study 2).

The findings indicate that CET shows greater negative effects on perceptions of a country and its products, when the country is from a similar out-group than when it is from a dissimilar one. On the other hand, COS showed equally strong positive effects among consumers for both similar and dissimilar out-group countries.

The results suggest that Asian consumers feel a sense of intergroup rivalry with other Asian countries, and, as a result, exhibit a greater degree of ethnocentric biases toward these countries and their products than they do toward Western countries and products. Also, the results suggest that COS may transcend national differences and inter-country rivalries in consumer consumption tendencies.

The study examines inter-country similarities as a moderator of CET and COS effects, which has not been extensively researched in the past. In addition, the study discusses the concept of intergroup rivalry among neighboring countries and examines how it affects consumer perceptions of out-group countries and their products in Asia, where strong inter-country rivalries exist.

Irrespective of the popularity of country-of-origin research in international marketing, no attention has been paid to effects which stem from the declaration of a product's local origin, like “Made in City X”. In this study, insights from country-of-origin research as well as exploratory qualitative studies are used to model determinants of preference for local products. Conjoint analysis results based on a sample of consumers from three neighboring cities in Germany show the importance of local origin for product preference. Structural equation analysis sheds first light on the mechanism of city-of-origin effects.

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the literature regarding the effect of country of origin on consumer perceptions of products and services. Results reveal that consumer perceptions differ significantly on the basis of product/service and country of origin. The country of origin may be an important element in the perceptions consumers have of products and services especially where little other information is known. However, the question of how much influence the country of origin provides in product and service evaluations remains unanswered and a number of other major issues have yet to be resolved. Directions for future research are developed.

In this paper, the authors aim to introduce the notion of region of origin effect and articulate why home region boundaries should be factored in when understanding firm strategy and outcomes.

The paper validates the region of origin effect on internationalization using a sample of 11,677 firms from 99 developing countries in a multilevel model, with both frequentist and Bayesian approaches.

The findings of this paper indicate consistent support for the notion of region of origin effect. The relative importance of direct region effects in explaining variation in firm internationalization was found to be 17.8 per cent. When indirect effects (i.e. varying slopes) were factored in, the relative importance was 16.6 per cent. Additionally, the findings show that the region of origin effect impacts the degree of strength of the well-established firm drivers of internationalization.

Although the importance of the home region location is well known to researchers and practitioners of international business, it has not received the attention it deserves. The findings of this paper clearly demonstrate the need for researchers and practitioners to recognize the role of the region of origin effect in formulating and implementing global strategies.

Purpose – Extensive research in the area of consumer behavior has documented the “Country of Origin Effect,” which identifies country of origin as an important decision variable in evaluating products and services. Past research has mostly assumed that country of origin effect is driven by the performance of the products originating in that country. However, consumers can also form opinions about countries based on exposure to information that is unrelated to the product and may have roots in macro factors such as history, culture, and politics. These emotions, while extraneous to the product, can also influence product evaluations along with performance-related country information.Design/methodology/approach – This review examines research addressing both performance and emotional perceptions related to country of origin.Findings – This review presents an integrating framework termed “Nation Equity” to systematically understand and examine the influence of various dimensions of country of origin on consumer decision making.

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.