The importance of country images in the formation of consumer product perceptions

Presents the results of a survey conducted among 194 retail salesmen of electronic equipment and 190 male consumers. According to salesmen, country of origin is a much less important attribute for shoppers of video‐cassette recorders and themselves than brand reputation. For the purpose of comparison, both salesmen and consumers provided direct evaluative judgements of 13 countries on their design and assembly capabilities, of three VCR brands and of the quality and purchase value of nine VCR conjoint profiles varying systematically with respect to country of design, country of assembly, brand, price and warranty. Salesmen’s direct importance weights were found to differ greatly from conjoint derived weights in that, in the latter case, country of origin cues had a significant and, with regard to quality perceptions, greater impact than the other attributes. Multiple regression models relating the direct perceptions of the countries of origin to brand evaluations indicate that the nesting of country perceptions in brand evaluation may partly explain this apparent inconsistency.