Effect of Country of Origin on Buying Behaviour

This study on the effects of Country of Origin (COO) on buying behaviour seeks to examine how consumers respond to products imported from another country; designed in one country yet assembled in another country; and manufactured in one country but branded in another. Here the differential effects of Country of Assembly (COA) and Country of Design (COD) in combination with two other potentially important cues, namely brand and price have been examined on two types of products - Television and Car.

Consumers, while choosing products/services, make complex trade-off between more than one characteristic. Given this multi-attribute nature of products, conjoint measurement technique has been used.

The methodology used here consists of conjoint analysis through design of orthogonal plan cards using SPSS Package. Data Collection was done by administering the plan cards (product profiles) along with the questionnaire to the selected sample of consumer individually. Our sample consisted of students of Management Institutes.

The findings suggest that the brand name and image are the most important piece of information cue used by consumers, while the country of assembly has the least importance. The country of design has been found to be the second most important piece of information in case of car, while price is the second most important information cue in case of TV. The implications of the study are basically two: Firstly, marketing strategy should lay emphasis upon brand communications in all product categories; and secondly, the country of manufacture/assembly is no longer important to consumers. Hence, manufacturing/assembly should be outsourced to low cost countries.