Abstract:
Research on the effects of country-of-origin (COO) cues has been an important research stream over the past five decades. The purpose of the present study was to expand current knowledge of country-of-origin effects in advertising by assessing the effectiveness of two implicit and two explicit COO markers in advertisements in the Netherlands. Together with the baseline condition, the study had a 5 (COO marker conditions) x 3 (product-country combinations) mixed design. The effects of country-of-origin markers were examined on different dependable variables: attitude toward the product, the advertisement, and the quality of the product, purchase intention and the link between the product and the COO. Fifteen advertisements were developed. A total of 178 people participated in an online questionnaire. Differences between the three product-country advertisements were found, but not many across the different COO marker strategies. None of the strategies was convincingly more effective than the others across all marker conditions.
