CONSUMERS’ PERCEPTION OF THE

COUNTRY-OF-ORIGIN EFFECT ON
PURCHASING INTENTIONS OF
(IN) CONSPICUOUS PRODUCTS
 What is Conspicuous
products ?
Conspicuous products are public display of
individual possession and consumption of
expensive goods ad services

It conveys the idea of social status and

display by pattern of consumption
• Consumers’ Decision

• Imagery of Country of Origin effect

e.g. Germany is associated with good
engineering work ,
Japan has good association with
technology
Cont…

• Impact of COO

• Negative Perception

• Different level of information

 A Four cell matrix
PRODUCT TYPE

LUXURY NECESSITY

PUBLIC
PUL PUN
e.g. Convertible e.g. Sunglass,
CONSUMPTION
Sports car Wrist watch.
PRL PRN
PRIVATE e.g. Home e.g. Toothpaste
Theatre
 Matrix cont…
• Publicly consumed luxury (PUL) :-
Product consumed in public view and
not commonly owned or used e.g. Golf
Club

• Publicly consumed necessity (PUN) :-

Product consume din public view that
virtually everyone owns or uses e.g.
Wrist watch, shoes
Cont…
• Privately Consumed luxury (PRL) :-
Product consumed out of public view
and not commonly owned or used.
Home theatre

• Privately consumed necessity (PRN)

:-
Product consumed out of public view
that virtually everyone owns or uses
e.g. Toothpaste
 Luxury vs. necessity
products
• Luxury items have a degree of
exclusivity.
• Li and Wyer noted that with high-
involvement products, purchase
decision become more elaborate.
• Products commonly owned, such as
necessity items, tend to represent
lower monetary risk and hedonistic
value, and command less
involvement.
Publicly vs. privately consumed
products
• Publicly consumed products may
reflect a consumer’s self-perception.
 Preliminary steps
(Method)

• 107 respondents given definition of four

product categories and asked to assign each
one of 39 products to one of the categories.
• 30 respondents to select the countries to be
used in the study. They were provided with a
list of 15 countries and then asked to
evaluate whether goods produced in these
countries of good quality in general.
• The question aimed at finding whether
respondents had a country-of-origin effect
impression of the products made in the
countries listed.
 Seven scenarios
(Sampling design)
• 7 number of scenarios and a desire
to include 40 respondents in each
scenario were selected to consider all
people.
• 336 questionnaire were prepared,
reflecting the provision that, on
average, 8 respondents per scenario
were expected to provide incomplete
or otherwise unusual questionnaires.
Six section of the questionnaire
(Questionnaire development)

• 1- the ranking of product attribute in

general

• 2- ranking of the same product attributes

given one of the four products tested in
the survey.

• 3- measured the importance rating of each

product attribute when deciding to
 Cont…
• 4- assessed consumers’ familiarity with
sunglasses using a 5 point bipolar semantic
differential scale.

• 5- tapped the consumers’ level of agreement with

statements about purchasing sunglasses using
lickert scale.

• 6- investigated the consumers’ likelihood to

purchase sunglasses with a 5 point bipolar
semantic differential scale.
 Objective Of Study
• To investigate impact of country of
origin on consumers’ purchasing
intention of products that are
consume inconspicuously.
• Out of 336 questionnaires 296 were
usable. And its convenience method.
 Results of Hypothesis
• The data indicates that information
on a product’s COO is more
important for Luxury than for
necessity products.
• So accept hypo. That influence of
COO will be greater on PUL than on
PRL.
 Decision-making
attribute
• Here respondents are giving more
preference to attributes like price,
versatility, appearances and other
attributes than COO’s importance as
a decision-making attribute.
 Bonferroni Test Results
• Results from this study of finding out the
COO effect, products COO may be a weak
determinant in purchasing products, while
its importance is higher when considering
the purchase of luxury over necessity
products.

• A more +ve COO or even an absence of

COO (e.g. japan) information elicit more
purchase intentions than a less +ve COO
 Preference for national
product categories
• Overall, our findings corroborate earlier
research, confirming that a product’s
extrinsic cues, such as its COO, are less
important than intrinsic cues, such as
reliability and performance.
• But than also consumer considered the
product’s COO to be either important for
luxury products or somewhat imp. for
necessities.
Better Understanding
• So as mktg manager they have to
identified the image of their country and
consider two options.

3. They should stress on a very +ve COO as

an asset for the particular product
category
4. On the other hand, they should avoid
giving consumers a COO cue when it is
not the most +ve.
 Constraints of Types Of
Products
• Findings from this study don’t
quantitatively support the contention
that a product’s conspicuous
consumption may be linked to its
COO.

• As some consumers conspicuously

consume brands to define
themselves towards others and their
own selves.
 Executive summary and
implication for Managers
• Consumers place COO below such
things as quality and reliability as
factors influencing purchase
decisions.

• For example, Mercedes make good

cars but don’t necessarily transfer
such as +ve an impression to other
German products .
 Conti…
• Piron’s findings confirm that consumers
use a product’s COO as a Cue in purchase
decision but that this cue can be
superseded by product knowledge

• Thus COO effects will remain with us and

will always colour people’s attitude to
Brands. But they are neither as important
nor as powerful as many have thought in
the past.