The Impact of Country-of-Origin and Joy on Product Evaluation: A Comparison of Chinese and German Intimate Apparel

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국마케팅과학회
· 수록지 정보 : Journal of Global Fashion Marketing / 1권 / 2호 / 89 ~ 99페이지
· 저자명 : Nils O. Ommen, Tobias Heußler, Christof Backhaus, Manuel Michaelis, Dieter Ahlert

초록

Consumer’s differentiated perception and appraisal of aproduct’s country-of-origin (COO) exerts large influence onperception of the COO-image (COI) and on the perceivedproduct quality.
At peripheral information processing COO-Image (COI)provides a basis to ease requirements for informationprocessing in form of heuristics.
Most of internationalization literature examines the COOeffect with respect to high-involvement products and in contextof cognitive processing. However studies from Maheswaran andChen (2006) point out, that besides cognitive influences, alsospecific emotions impact on COO-effects. Whereas theinfluence of negative emotions like anger, sadness orfrustration on processing and judgments could be exposed, theissue of positive emotions’ impact still stays open.
Since the question should be answered, if emotions impacton COO-Effects, it is emphasized to focus on COO as anaffective heuristic operating as a “halo” effect on attitudestowards a product. Because both marketing and evolutionarytheories of emotion act on the assumption of satisfaction ofhuman needs, latter is specified, describing emotions ascomplex chains of events with stabilizing feedback loops.
Particularly, in the context of impulsive purchasing emotionplays a vital role. Impulsive buyers are more emotionalized,experiencing more enthusiasm, joy, and glee than nonbuyers.
Thus “joy” leads to impulsive decision making behavior.
Drawing on the extant literature, we develop our conceptualframework to analyze whether, and if so, how positiveemotions (such as joy) affect the impact of COO on productevaluation. Based on an experimental study including 130respondents, we test three hypotheses: whether the COO hasan impact on product evaluation (H1), whether the positiveemotion of joy has a stronger positive influence on product evaluation than neutral emotional states (H2), and whether thepositive emotion of joy reduces the positive relationship ofCOO on product evaluation (H3).
In the experimental design, it is hypothesized that the latentvariable Emotion impacts on the latent variable COI and inaddition that these latent variables, both influence beliefstowards the product in terms of a halo effect. Latent variablesin each case get measured with manifested variables in formof validated scales. Cause-and-effect relations are revealed inan experiment concerning a factorial test arrangement with a2x2 factor design, consisting of two COOs (China vs.
Germany) and two emotional states (joy vs. neutral state).
Complex pictures from International Affective Picture Systemstate standardized stimuli obtaining specific emotions. Theapparel industry serves as the product category used in theexperiment because impulsive buying behavior is quite commonin this product category. Moreover, we chose women asrespondents because they rather purchase for emotional andrelationship-oriented reasons. Products get labeled with woventags and tags at clothes hangers manipulating COO.
Analysis of variance (ANOVA) can be counted among themost important analysis methods in marketing research and isused for analysis, with emotional state and COO being theindependent variables and product evaluation as the dependentvariable. Prior to probing hypothesized assumptions amanipulation check concerning induced emotions wassuccessful. Participants primed with the joyful IAPS checked asignificantly higher percentage of positive adjectives thanrespondents primed with the neutral IAPS (joyful=.76, neutral=.61; F=7.59, p<.001). Also the used scale of ProductEvaluation could be validated by confirmatory factor analysis.
The main effect of emotion is highly significant for productevaluation. Following Cohen (1988), the strength of the effectsis large (η2 = 10.8 %). Product evaluation is influenced by ahighly significant interaction effect (Emotion * COO,EtaSquare: 6.2 %). COO has a significant influence on productevaluation giving support for H1. Furthermore respondents in ajoyful state evaluate the product significantly better thanrespondents in a neutral state (MVJoy=4.89 vs. MVNeutral=4.33,F=11.359, p<.001). This finding confirms our hypothesis H2.
Since the product evaluation is influenced by an interactioneffect, the impact of COO must be analyzed in both cases for(1) joy and (2) neutral state. In a neutral emotional staterespondents evaluate products of German origin (MV=4.73)significantly better compared to a Chinese COO (MV=3.94). Incontrast to this, COO does not affect product evaluation whenthe respondent is in a joyful mood: The Chinese product (MV=4.89) is evaluated better than the German product (MV =4.87). However, the difference is not statistically significant.
This finding confirms hypothesis H3.
This survey increases acknowledgement concerning emotionalimpacts on perception of COO serving as affective heuristic,because during induction of joyful emotional states a tendencytowards an alleviated COO-Effect is demonstrated. Thusemotion impacts on perception of COO information at such arate that poor COIs can be valorized, while beneficial domesticCOIs rather level off.
Insights for retailers and manufacturers’ brand managementare that they should pay attention to consumer’s emotionalstate while developing foreign markets. They have tocontinually encourage consumers’ positive emotion throughstore design, product displays, package designs and sales inorder to valorize poor COIs. Contrariwise brand managementfrom manufacturers offering brands, featuring beneficial COIsshould mind that encouraging consumers’ positive emotions byrecommended actions, impacts on apparel featuring poor COIsin superior manner.

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