Made In China: Source Effect On Italian Consumer Product Evaluation

China has been the world’s export trade power and millions of commodities that printed with "Made in China" spread throughout the world. Unfortunately China, the factory of the world and also the world’s large exporter of goods, has not established a very good product image to the world, which affects the evaluation of products for the people. China and Italy are enjoying a closer relationship of bilateral trade. In 2008, China rank 14th of top 20 export markets of Italy, and rank 3rd of the top 20 countries of import. It is important to understand the attitude and evaluation of Italians towards products made-in-China.The purpose of this study is try to find out (1) the effect of Made-in-China on Italian consumers’ evaluation of Products, e.g. whether it is positive or negative;(2) the effect of Made-in-China in different product categories for Italian consumers to evaluate the products;(3) the effect of Made-in-China in the intervention of Brand for Italian consumers to evaluate the products; and (4) combining above three findings and results, to find out some reasonable and feasible solutions or suggestions for Chinese companies who want to enter or already stay in Italian market.The process of the study is extracting ideas from literature review, establishing conceptual framework, proposing hypotheses, creating effective and interesting experimental survey, analyzing data, and gaining result, forming conclusions for further suggestion offering.After thoroughly reviewing and study of literature and Journal, the author summarized the materials and research done by the previous scholars in the aspects of (1) the different definitions of Country Image; (2) the sections of Country-of-Origin;(3)the influence Factor in Country-of-Origin;(4) the four different models of Country-of-Origin;(5) the history of Country-of-Origin, and (6) in the fourth part put forward a straightforward structure model of Influence Factors in Country-of-Origin.(See Figure 1)Conceptual Framework and Hypotheses were established. (See chapter 3). The conceptual frame work is made like a supply chain that products come from country-of-origin to country-of-consumption based on the straightforward structure model in the literature review. And also two intervention factors are introduced into this process.-One is Product Category, and it is divided into two kinds of products:high-price and low-price. The effect of Country-of-Origin varies from category and category. Consumers tend to be more careful when making purchase decision of high-price products. They will collect information on their own and consider a variety of purchase decision. In other words, their level of involvement will be higher and they will tend to get enough information before they purchase a high-price product.-The other one is Brand. When the consumer becomes more familiar with the products or are given more information, the effect of Country-of-Origin will decrease.The author then divided this process into three different situations:(1)Different Country-of-Origin, Same Product, different Consumers;(2)Different Country-of-Origin, Different Product (Price), Same Consumers;(3)Different Country-of-Origin, Different Product (Brand), Same ConsumersAnd respectively proposed several hypotheses for the above three situations. (See Chapter 3 or table 6)In order to obtain some data support for the hypotheses, an interesting experimental survey was established. The experimental survey used expected value of Product as a mark for the above three different situations, and focused on Italians’expected price on different products (high-price/low-price, or with/without brand) made-in-China.The result showed us that:(1)For Chinese, the effect of Made-in-China is not significant and the effect of Made-in-Italy for Chinese is positive.(2)For Italian, The effect of Made-in-China is highly negative, and the effect of Made-in-Italy for Italian is highly positive. The effect of Made-in-Italy of high-price product for Italian is moderately positive, while the effect of Made-in-China is slightly negative for high-price product and highly negative for low-price product. When price of product is higher, the effect of Country-of-Origin (Made-in-China) decreases for Italian. Besides, under the impact of strong brand, the negative effect of Made-in-China decreases The author found that Chinese are more objective. Their mark(expected price) does not change a lot once they are told that the products are made in China, while they still can not help to add some prices for those made in Italy, rationally, and not zealous as Italian do. On the contrary, Italians are very confident in those products made in Italy and they are favourable of those products. They tend to give high appraise to those made in Italy even they have no difference with others in almost every aspects, colour, design, material etc. That is why in the survey, Italian give high mark (expected price) once they are informed that this product is Italian-made. The effect of Country-of-Origin (Made-in-Italy) is very positive and effective. Sadly, from the result of the data analysis, it is obvious that Made-in-China has a negative effect on the products for Italian, more for low-price products and less for high-price products. Although under the intervention of Brand, this negative effect will decrease.Though this study has many limitation in sample, product and brand selection, the author suggest that despite the whole environment which is not so optimistic, the living environment is better for a company who produce high-price products (e.g. telephone, television, computer etc) to enter the Italian Market. For those produce low-price products, they have to be poorly weighed down with a strong negative effect of Made-in-China, even if they have the same quality, design, and material, colour as the others. At this situation, establishing a brand should be considered as a priority, since the brand will make up for the negative effect of "Made-in-China". However, risks exist that a brand "come from China" may also have a negative effect. And this complicated question is not yet known in this survey, and remains to be studied in the future.