Title:
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Explaining the Product-Specificity of Country-of-Origin Effects : The Role of Typicality
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This research works to understand the various discrepancies in the acceptability
of different products from a single country. The concept of product typicality holds
promise for this direction. Specifically, this project is particularly interested in the role
of typicality in COO effects.
Additionally, this study focuses also on the role of typicality among ethnocentric
consumer images toward domestic products and consumer attitudes toward disliked
foreign products as well as the role of typicality among certain consumer-related and
product-related contingent variables, such as the consumer need for variety, the
consumer need for uniqueness, types of goods (necessity/luxury), and product
category structure (super-ordinate/ subordinate).
An extensive mix of a between- and within-subjects design experiment was used
to test the key hypotheses in particular. The results suggest that product typicality can
actually account for the discrepancies of COO effects across different products of a
country. More typical products of a country can possess stronger COO images and get
more favorable consumer attitudes. Further, different moderation effects of all the
contingent variables on the effects of product typicality regarding COO provide
researchers and marketers valuable insights into product-specific COO effects for
different market targets.
It is therefore recommended for researchers to use product typicality instead of
general COO images to account for the varied effects across different products and for
marketers to focus more on the differentiations of COO effects among industries.
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