EFFECTS OF CONSUMER PREFERENCES FOR FOREIGN SOURCED PRODUCTS

When deciding on overseas production locations, the manager must take into account not only resource and cost benefits, but the effect that country of origin may have on consumer evaluations. An experiment conducted by a telephone survey procedure examined country of origin perceptions of twelve countries and eight products, using both perceived quality and choice measures. As hypothesized, preferences were found to be more product specific for industrialized than less developed countries. In addition, hypotheses that performance risk and brand moderate the effects of country were upheld under most conditions.