The Influence Of A Country's Economic Development Level On Product Familiarity And The Country-of-origin Effect

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of the economic development level(EDL)of a country on its country-of-origin(COO)image,COO effect and product familiarity.The paper suggests that the EDL has significant influence on all of them.Design/methodology/approach: Four different types of food and beverages,namely rose jam,coffee,cheese and red wine,were chosen for stimuli.Four countries,two developing(Bulgaria and Colombia)and two developed(Italy and France),were selected as their countries of origin in order to test subjects' attitudes.Data was collected via a self-administered online survey,which was completed by 321 Chinese citizens.Analysis was completed using correlations,regressions and the General linear model.Findings: The results suggest that there is a significant difference in product familiarity,COO image and COO effect between developing and developed countries.Moreover,product type appears to have a much greater significance for the former countries than it does for the latter.This implies that COO effect for developing countries is often limited to a single product-country association,and is thus more narrow,while developed countries tend to experience a wider COO effect encompassing many different products.Practical implications: The findings indicate that governments of developing economies could improve their product familiarity and COO effect via strengthening the existing product-image associations and slowly and consistently building new ones.Research limitations : Future research could attempt to use a bigger sample and pre-test the stimuli in order to avoid some of the setbacks of this study.Originality/value:The influence of the EDL on the COO image and product familiarity in the context of the Chinese imported food market is,to the best of author's knowledge,an original contribution.Academically,the clear distinctions between the COO image and COO effect,as well as the “narrow” and a “wide” COO effect,have also been found to be of original value.