A Study Of The Influence Of Positive Emotions On Country-of-Origin Effect

A consumer’s evolution and judgment on a product of a certain country is always influenced by his comprehensive cognition on the country, especially when he is not well informed of other attributes of the product. Country of Origin (CoO), one of the most important information clues on product and brand, controls the whole consumer decision-making process, which is called Country-of-Origin effect. In the field of western marketing, researchers have investigated its effect into performance, mechanism of action and influential factors from multiple perspectives. As far as the stereotyped impression on ’Made in China’, which has a somewhat image of low price and quality for many years, Chinese marketing researchers pose the strategies and advices for business marketing about how to avoid the negative effect on country of origin. However, a few studies have been concerned about the issues on the relationship between emotion and the CoO effect. In fact, although temporary, emotion is sufficient enough to make an important impact on CoO effect in comsumer decision, even become ’National Brand Equality’a crucial source, independent of a product’s own nature.This study explores the issue on the impact of emotion on brand CoO effect and regardes emotion as a complexity of multiple cognitive attributes based on the theory of Affect Infusion Model (AIM), deeply discussing the multiple cognitive modes influenced by diverse emotional appraisals.This paper consists of six chapters as follows:Chapter1is introduction. It puts forward the study of main issues, research background as well as the theories and practical meaning.Chapter2provides a literature review and puts forward the hypotheses. The history and current situation of researches on CoO effect and the relationship of emotion and cognition are systematically reviewed. The author introduces basic concepts, classic theories and research system in these two fields. They eventually lay the foundation for the research hypotheses.Chapter3and Chapter4are main sections of this dissertation, which consist of empirical studies, including eight experiments. Experiment1and Experiment2aim to exposing matching relationship between emotion focus and information direction based on self-other focus of specific emotion. The result demonstrates that in the state of self-focused emotions such as happiness and pride, participants prefer the evalution on advertisement focused on ’individual’, however, in the state of other-focused emotions such as peacefulness and empathy, they prefer the advertisement focused on ’our’. Experiment3and Experiment4extend the result found in first two studies to the field of CoO effect, where the matching relationship between emotion focus and culture direction of CoO is tested. The USA is regarded as the typical example of individualism in western culture where the universal self-concept is independent self, while China as the one of collectivism in eastern culture where interdependent self is common. The results show more positive attitudes in the state of self-focused than other-focused emotion when the USA is the CoO of a brand, however, there is no significant difference between two emotional states for China brand. In other words, the advantage of CoO effect of the USA compared with China is remarkable when participants are happy; however, this advantage disappears when they are peaceful.Chapter4provides a deep investigation into the influence of emotion on CoO effect through introducing basic emotion dimensions:arousal level and positive-negative value. The studies obtain the different cognitive process and result in the influence of emotion on CoO effect through manipulating variables of product category (Experiment5) and additional product information (Experiment6&Experiment7) to change the complex extent of cognitive tasks. India is chosen as the example of negative CoO image and collectivism culture. The results demonstrate that heuristic strategy motivated by simple task plays an important role in the cognitive process. Participants tend to make decision based on the stereotyped CoO image when facing with simple task. However, substantive strategy primed by complex task makes self-other focused appraisal of specific emotion play the crucial role in the influence on CoO effect. Specifically, consumers’attitude is more positive to the brand from India than that without CoO information when they are in the state of peacefulness which is compatible with Indian culture. Experiment6obtains more positive attitudes toward China brand in the state of peacefulness than happiness when additional and consistent information about product attributes is provided to participants, which is another way to increase the complexity of cognitive task. However, CoO will be tested to have been disappeared if the additional information is inconsistent with existing information, because low affect infusion model is motivated by overload cognitive task. Experiment8introduces positive-negative value, another variable in basic emotion dimensions. Compared with the result obtained in the positive emotion state, the matching relationship between emotion focus and culture direction is found reversed under the condition of negative and self-focus emotion state, which means purchasing intension of American brand is weaker than that of Chinese brand.Chapter5and Chapter6provide comprehensive conclusions and discussion. The author points out the creativity of this research in the field of influential factors on CoO effect as well as the impact of emotions’attributes on cognitive process in varying modes. Referring to the practical contribution, the conclusions will be helpful for promoting a nation’s image, improving the evaluation on products and brands from the nation and making concrete maketing measures respectively. Meanwhile, the author analyzes deficiency and solutions of the study in depth such as problems in emotion priming and measurement and indicates a research orientation in the future such as the supplementary for the relationship of emotion and CoO effect based on the character of cognitive subject and also the issue on extensively combining other cognitive appraisals of specific emotion with CoO effect.