Country of origin and stereotypes’ influence on the brand evaluation of a product

As it was introduced above, usually, according to most patterns of consumer decision making and information processing of product quality, evaluations are deduced from cues (Steenkamp, 1989). When all the essential basic requirements for cue selection such as clearness and intensity are available, the employment of a cue is achieved by the perception of its predictive value by consumers. The predictive value of a cue can be influenced by the covariation among cue and characteristic (Steenkamp, 1989), and the perceived deductible relation among cue and attribute. Specifically, within COO, such relation is widely formed by product-country images, that are mental depictions of a country’ s culture, people, products, and national symbols (Askegaard & Ger, 1998).

Clearly, product - country images entail largely shared cultural stereotypes. For instance, as it was already argued above, from Leclerc et al (1994)’s researches, it emerged a positive effect of brand names with French sound on assessments of hedonic products such as perfume and wine. Conversely, it emerged a negative effect on the assessments of “utilitarian'' products such as cars and computers. In addition, product’s country images also include distinctive convictions and opinions about products made in a certain country due to consumers’ both direct and indirect product experiences. As it was already mentioned in the previous subchapter, Roth and Romeo (1992) maintained that consumers’ judgements of a certain product from a specific country X depend on the match among product and country.

According to the authors, consumers tend to prefer country X as an origin for specific products when they are convinced that there is a match among the perceived favourable features of country X and the expertise needed to manufacture the considered product. For instance, people’s inclination to buy cars made in Germany can be explained by the knowledge of German excellent engineering and high technologic quality. According to Chowdhury and Ahmed (2009), in order to have a better comprehension of consumer behaviour “Categorization theory” reveals to be very useful. In this regard, Balabanis and Diamantopoulos (2011) stated that categorization can be considered as a conceptual operation that involve considering an object as a sample of a category.

This is because nowadays consumers have to deal with difficult choices on a daily mode, as they dispose of several products characterized of both common and unique peculiarities. According to such theory, mindsets related to a certain stimulus are connected to mindsets related to the activated category. Consequently, when consumers deal with a country name related to a positive image, consumers will imply positive opinions about the product produced in such country.

Conversely, according to Chowdhury and Ahmed (2009), when the image of a country is not good, consumer’s opinion of the product will be negative accordingly. Indeed, as it was already stated above, such image is able to strongly influence and develop consumers’ perceptions of a determined brand related to such country. Chowdhury and Ahmed (2009) developed a structural model to analyse how COO associations can be integrated when forming related behavioural reflections. The model is made up of seven theoretical constructs.

Any constructs need to be measured indirectly by means of multiple indicators. Such constructs can be classified in three main categories:

1. Evaluation of the COO associations;

2. Evaluation of the product;

3. Evaluation of the quality.

According to the supposition that the most generalized constructs usually affect the most specific product-related ones, the direction of the hypothesized effects will start from the country evaluation to the assessment of the country’s products and, in turn, to the intention of buying products made in such country (Chowdhury & Ahmed, 2009). Balabanis and Diamantopoulos (2011) stated that “categorization” can be defined as a cognitive process as it explains how people settle mental information coming from outside. Such process provides two functions called coding of experience and licensing of inferences. As far as the former is concerned, according to the authors:

“[...] it reduces the “demands for perceptual processes, storage space, and reasoning processes all of which are known to be limited” (Balabanis & Diamantopoulos, 2011, 96).

Consequently, when consumers classify brands according to various origins, they can save cognitive resources. Indeed, in this regard, according to Balabanis and Diamantopoulos, from categorization research it emerged that individuals do not voluntarily and personally assess every new stimulus they face, though they commonly assess such stimulus in terms of whether or not it can be organized as a component of a category that was determined earlier. As it was introduced above, the second function of categorization is the licensing of inferences. In this regard, as the authors maintained:

“The category label and/or values of some of the category dimensions are presented and the value of another category dimension must be predicted” (Balabanis & Diamantopoulos, 2011, 97).

Consequently, consumers produce inferences on brand’s attributes (e.g. reliability) according to the related familiarity with the brand origin (BO) (i.e., the category label). In this regard, Han (1989) provided an explanation about the information processing COO, affecting brand evaluations, and purchase intentions. Indeed, the author stated that such information can be categorized into cognitive and affective processes.