Antecedents, moderators and dimensions of country-of-origin evaluations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an in-depth examination of country-of-origin (COO) perceptions of consumers in a multinational setting. It shows how explanatory factors like demographics, familiarity with a country’s products, purchase behaviour and psychological variables jointly work to explain consumers ’ COO perceptions. Design/methodology/approach – This is a quantitative study using a drop-off and pick-up survey among three samples of consumers in Canada, Morocco and Taiwan. The final sample size was comprised of 506 male consumers. The data were analyzed using factor analysis to group countries of origin and analyses of variance to relate COO perceptions to the explanatory variables. Findings – The familiarity with products made in a country was the strongest predictor of country perceptions, followed by nationality and the manufacturing process and product complexity dimensions of country evaluation. Canadians had the highest propensity to distinguish between countries of origin on the basis of product technological complexity and manufacturing dimensions and Moroccans the least. Taiwanese appeared to show animosity towards China. Research limitations/implications – The study used an only-male sample from a limited numbe