The Effects of Different Country-of-Origin Strategies in Food Advertising.

Abstract

The country-of-origin (COO) of a product has been researched thoroughly in international marketing. Communicating a COO leads to differences in product evaluations, which is commonly referred to as the COO effect. But, how many ways are there to communicate a product’s country-of-origin in advertising? Does this lead to a different product evaluation? How do different strategies to communicate this differ from each other in terms of their effectiveness? This study provided an initial insight into differences in effectiveness between COO strategies as defined by Aichner (2014) in advertising. The attitude towards the advertisement and product, perceived product quality and purchase intention were compared across three different COO strategies and a baseline condition. A group of 123 Dutch participants took part in an experiment where each participant evaluated two advertisements.