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This paper aims to investigate the impacts of country-of-origin (COO) cues, country-related affect (CRA) and country-related product associations (CRPA) on consumers’ intention to purchase hotel services.

A survey of 305 respondents was conducted. Mediation and conditional process tests were performed to examine the proposed theoretical framework.

The results suggest that CRA is positively correlated with consumer trust, which, in turn, affects purchase intention. For consumers with a high (vs low) level of consumer ethnocentrism (CE), the effect of CRA on trust is weaker. CRPA is positively correlated with both consumer trust and price perception, which, in turn, affect purchase intention. For consumers with rich subjective knowledge (SK) of hotel services, the effect of CRPA on price perception is weaker. The effects of COO stereotypes and the moderation effects of CE and SK hold after controlling for consumers’ age, gender, income, education and objective knowledge.

Hospitality practitioners can make use of different types of country-related information to communicate effectively with consumers in a global environment.

This research is the first to discover the different mechanisms underlying different types of COO and the boundary conditions on these effects.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of the country-of-origin (COO) effect on overseas distributors’ behaviour in international marketing channels. Integrating the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and the concepts of country-induced biases, the current study develops an empirically testable model that explains and predicts overseas distributors’ behaviour in international marketing channels.

Hypotheses were tested using primary data stemmed from a survey of channel relationships between exporters and their overseas distributors. Data were collected from 103 distributors in the USA.

Empirical evidence shows that attitude towards foreign brands, social valuation of the origin of brands, and perceived behavioural control affect overseas distributors’ intention to place foreign brands. In addition, country-induced bias factors – buyer animosity and country-related affect to the origin of manufacture – are considered to be the antecedents of attitude towards foreign brands.

Because this study adopted a cross-sectional design, the limitations of this method can be applied to the study. In addition, because of the research context, the results of the present research may lack generalizability. This manuscript, however, integrated the TPB and the concepts of country-induced biases and addressed the calls for research on the COO effects on overseas distributors’ decision in international marketing channels.

The manuscript suggests that to build positive attitudes towards foreign brands, a firm should focus on promotions through various media in international markets to lower animosity and the perceived risk to the origin of manufacture. In addition, firms with foreign brands need to identify and target a segment that feels comfortable about spending their resources on those brands. Finally, international marketers should focus on creating positive attitudes towards foreign brand goods and proper pricing strategies.

This manuscript fills the knowledge gap of the COO effect on organizational buyer behaviour in international marketing channels.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a decision model for choosing the tendering procedure in PPP that minimizes the transaction costs borne by the public sector.

A conceptual model that relates the procurement procedures described in the EU legal framework to launch PPPs and the transaction costs, considering the level of information managed by each procurement procedure has been developed. The authors use this conceptual model to develop propositions about the impact that specific project- and country-related factors have on the choice of the procurement procedure that minimizes the transaction costs.

The application of the proposed model to the case of the Italian highway “Cispadana” shows its usefulness in orienting the public authority’s choice between the different tendering procedures, taking into account project- and country-related factors.

The present study fills the gap existing in the literature on transaction costs of PPP projects and the procurement procedure used to launch those projects by developing a model that relates the level of transaction costs with a set of key factors, namely the level of information managed during the tendering process, the number of bidders, the project size, the project complexity, and the institutional environment.

As for practitioners, the main contribution of this study lies in offering a tool for supporting the public authority in the decision-making process about the tendering procedures in PPPs without imposing the selection of a specific procedure.

The approach developed provides a new tool to support the contracting authority in the design and choice of the tendering procedures in PPP.

Building upon previous research on country-of-origin. This study aims to investigate whether the effects of country-of-origin extend to the hotel industry, based on associative network and signaling theories.

Based on a self-administered survey with tourists in China, this paper investigates antecedents and outcomes of hotel brand image and the moderating role of a hotel’s brand origin.

Results reveal country, city and industry images positively influence hotel brand image. Hotel brand image then influences price perception, quality perception and overall satisfaction.

Country-of-operation image remains a relevant, powerful predictor of brand image; thus, hotels need to carefully manage country-of-operation image.

This paper incorporates and establishes the role of country-of-operation image on hotel brand image.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate “how” and “when” the stereotypes of competence and warmth, that are evoked by a foreign company’s country-of-origin (COO), affect blame attributions and/or attitudes toward a company’s products when a company is involved in a product-harm crisis.

Study 1 (n=883) analyzes the psychological mechanisms through which perceived COO competence and warmth differently affect blame attributions and evaluative responses. Study 2 (n=1,640) replicates Study 1’s findings, and it also investigates how consumer ethnocentrism, animosity toward a country, and product category characteristics moderate the hypothesized COO’s effects.

COO competence leads to more favorable attitudes toward the involved company’s products. This effect increases when the company sells high-involvement or utilitarian products. COO warmth leads to more favorable attitudes toward the involved company’s products directly as well as indirectly by diminishing blame attributions. These effects increase when consumers are highly ethnocentric, or the animosity toward a foreign country is high.

This paper frames the investigation of COO stereotypes in a new theoretical and empirical setting, specifically, a product-harm crisis. It demonstrates that consumers differently evaluate a potential wrongdoing company and its harmful products in a product-harm crisis based on their perceptions of a company’s COO competence and warmth. Finally, it defines the moderating effects of individual, consumer-country-related and product characteristics on the hypothesized COO effects.

Country of origin (COO) effect refers to the influence of COO on consumers' perception and evaluation of a product. This research explores the impact of consumers' power distance on COO effect.

We conducted two experiments to test the relevant hypotheses.

The results indicate that power distance has a polarizing influence on COO effect. That means, for products from countries with good images, the higher the consumers' power distance, the better their evaluation of the products; while for products from countries with poor images, the higher the power distance, the worse their evaluation of the products. The research also finds the moderating effect of consumers' competence–related country-related affect (CRA). When holding positive competence–related CRA, for products from countries with good images, the higher the consumers' power distance, the better their evaluation of the products; for products from countries with poor images, consumers' power distance has no effect. When having negative competence–related CRA, for products from countries with poor images, the higher the consumers' power distance, the worse their evaluation of the products; for products from countries with good images, power distance has no effect.

This study finds that depending on the perception of COO image, power distance not only improves the evaluation of products but also lows such evaluation, reflecting a two-way polarizing feature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the country-of-origin (COO) effect on product evaluation to determine the different effects of COO in Asian nations.

The authors focus on automobiles as the target product category and conduct consumer surveys in three Asian countries – China, Japan, and South Korea – and the USA. Since these four countries are the major global production bases and consumption markets, the authors can examine the reciprocal effects of COO across countries. The authors propose a hierarchical conjoint analysis and estimate parameters. For the attributes of conjoint analysis, the authors incorporate both the COO of products and other functional aspects such as price and fuel consumption to compare their effects on consumer evaluation.

The authors find different tendencies in each country’s COO effect. Further, the authors discuss the factors affecting consumer evaluation in each country based on the country’s culture and general product images.

The authors’ contributions to the literature are as follows. First, in the research design, the authors incorporate COO information as an attribute of automobiles. This enables us to compare the COO effect with the effects of other functional aspects. The authors find that the COO effect is substantially the same as the effect of other functional attributes. Second, the authors assume a hierarchical structure in the conjoint analysis and discuss the different preferences in each country. This hierarchical structure enables to extract the reciprocal effects of COO across countries.

The purpose of this paper is to present a rejoinder. The rejoinder is written in response to the commentaries provided by Saeed Samiee and Jean‐Claude Usunier on the authors’ original research piece: “‘What? I thought Samsung was Japanese’: accurate or not, perceived country of origin matters”.

The rejoinder is organized into three separate sections. The first section identifies areas of agreement between the authors, and Samiee and Usunier. The second section responds directly to the empirical and conceptual criticisms levied by Samiee and Usunier and clarifies the authors’ contribution. The rejoinder concludes by identifying areas of future research that may help further advance the field.

In addition to responding directly to the criticism of the original study, perhaps more importantly, the authors note several areas of common ground. First, there is agreement that future country‐of‐origin (COO) research designs must be careful to not artificially expose subjects to country cues that the consumer otherwise may not have considered. Second, in a globalizing world, brand origin perception appears to be more important than “made in” labels.

The authors do not consider the COO field outdated or irrelevant, but rather that it is a vibrant field of considerable interest to both practitioners and researchers. There is much still to be learned, and the authors hope the original research study and the ensuing debate have sparked fresh ideas and will lead to a continued effort in this interesting research field.

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.

Multinational firms account at present (1976) for almost 15% of the aggregate gross national products of the western world; their total foreign investments are in excess of 320 billion dollars and the aggregate market value of the foreign assets under their control is very likely about four to five times as large. The value of these assets is affected by various risks, i.e. the probability of a loss, that can be broadly classified as economic and political risks. This separation is certainly open to question since there can exist a close interdependency between the factors that constitute economic and political risks. A distinction is, nevertheless, appropriate since political risks stem from changes in (assumed) policy positions whereas economic risks are associated with changes concerning market, competitive, and technological factors that diminish the firm's effectiveness and profit potential. In addition, the factors responsible for political risks becoming an actuality are more easily identified than those forces which are responsible for the economic risks becoming an actuality.