Country Image and Brand Perception of Hybrid Products from Emerging Economies

The multiple country-of-origin products, or so called hybrid products, gain more and more interest in today’s consumer research filed, as empirical studies have shown that while products from industrialized countries generally enjoy positive country image both at home and abroad, products from the emerging market economies suffer liabilities of negative country image. The present study seeks to empirically test whether the country-of-origin sub-components: country-of-design, country-of-assembly, and country-of-parts, of a product with Western and non-Western countries-of-origin is important in the evaluation of unknown brand. Data were collected using a questionnaire that was administered to 243 students at Aalborg University. The results show that the student respondents do find the country of origins important when forming their brand perception or assessing the product; and they also ranked the products with the country of design and assembly coming from developed countries as the highest.