The Effects Of Consumer Affinity And Country Image On Attitude Toward Foreign Products

This study was designed to examine how country of origin effect works through affective and cognitive routes by investigating how consumer affinity and country image affect consumer attitude toward foreign products and whether there are moderating effects of value consciousness and national identity on the relationship between product attitude and purchase intentions.This is a quantitative study using on-line survey on samples of consumers across the UK.10most common "made in China" product categories in local market are included in the study. A total of829usable questionnaires were collected. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS17.0and AMOS16.0software.The results indicate that consumer affinity does not significantly influence product attitude but positively affect willingness to buy. Country image strongly and positively influence product image which further affects product attitude and willingness to buy. Comparatively, cognitive route by country image is more powerful than affective route through consumer affinity in explaining both product attitude and purchase intentions. The findings also show that the moderating effect of value consciousness on relationship between product attitude and purchase intentions is significant but national identity. Moreover, value consciousness is positively correlated with purchase intentions and national identity is negatively associated with product attitude and willingness to buy. In addition, there are significant differences among consumer evaluations on different foreign product categories, gender differences for consumer affinity, country image and value consciousness, as well as age differences for value consciousness.There are limitations regarding where the study was conducted, categories which were selected and the way data was collected. Another limitation pertains to the relatively poor reliability and validity of the measures of country image and national identity. Future research will benefit from choosing more countries and more product categories as well as better measures.The major contributions of the study consist of further demonstrating the effects of consumer affinity and country image on attitude toward foreign products, and the findings on the moderating effect of value consciousness and the relationships between two psychographic segmenting variables and behavioral intentions. Several implications for policy makers and managers are discussed.