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Activation of country stereotypes: automaticity, consonance, and impact

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Abstract

Country-of-origin (COO) research typically regards COO cue usage as a conscious and controlled process dependent on consumers’ intention to use COO information. However, emerging evidence indicates that country stereotypes can affect consumers’ brand evaluations regardless of intention. In three complementary experiments, this study investigates how the mere presence of country cues can trigger different kinds of country stereotypes (functional vs. emotional) which subsequently automatically influence consumers’ cognitive and affective brand evaluations as well as brand-related behavior. Findings confirm the automatic influence of country stereotypes and suggest that brand evaluations and brand-related behavior are enhanced when the underlying country stereotype matches the advertising execution format. On the other hand, mismatches can result in adverse effects. A follow-up study further reveals that cognitive and affective brand evaluations mediate COO effects on brand-related behavior. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are considered and future research directions identified.

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Notes

  1. The actual study topic was disguised as even mentioning COO as an issue may have unduly sensitized respondents (Samiee et al. 2005; Samiee 2010) and altered their “reference” (baseline) evaluations (see Procedure section). As a result, the pre-post exposure ratings analysis (necessary for testing H1) would have been biased. A similar disguise in a temporal separation context was applied in the classic COO studies by Hong and Wyer (1989, 1990).

  2. The number of attributes reflects a realistic number of attributes typically provided in that product category. Additionally, with a comprehensive number of product attributes provided, the COO cue reflects only an additional (extrinsic) information cue and is therefore not artificially highlighted in the study design.

  3. Respondents rated the four print advertisements (within-subjects design) on the same set of dependent measures as in the main study (see Appendix 2). The two advertisements which discriminated most with regards to their cognitive evaluation and their affective evaluation (see Construct Measurement below) were selected as stimuli for the main study. The detailed the results of pre-tests are available, upon request, from the authors.

  4. According to Hong and Wyer (1990, p. 283), when the COO cue is presented before the attribute information, consumers are more likely to “form a central concept of the product on the basis of its country of origin and to use this concept either to organize or to interpret the other information presented later.”

  5. For all dependent variables, the average variance extracted (AVE) values exceed the .50 benchmark (Fornell and Larcker 1981), providing support for convergent validity. Additionally, we tested for discriminant validity by comparing the AVE to the squared correlation of the constructs for each pair of dependent variables. For each construct, the highest amount of shared variance with other constructs is lower than the corresponding AVE, supporting discriminant validity (Fornell and Larcker 1981).

  6. Tests of homogeneity of regression slopes showed that the covariates did not interact with the independent variables. Moreover, only the perceived importance of the COO showed significant effects on any of the dependent variables and was retained as covariate in the subsequent analysis.

  7. The relevant F-values of Pillai’s trace from the MANCOVAs were F (6, 524) = 4.09, p < 0.01 for cognitive evaluations; F (6, 524) = 4.41, p < 0.001 for affective evaluations; and F (4, 526) = 9.81, p < 0.001 for brand-related behavior, respectively.

  8. As was the case in Experiment 1, we first run MANCOVAs in Experiment 2 and followed this by the ANCOVA analysis shown in Table 4. The interaction terms in the MANCOVAs were again highly significant for cognitive evaluations (F (6, 524) = 6.16, p < 0.001), affective evaluations (F (6, 524) = 5.27, p < 0.001) as well as brand-related behavior (F (4, 526) = 21.64, p < 0.001).

  9. This is also reflected in the relevant MANCOVA results which reveal a non-significant interaction term for cognitive evaluations (F (6, 596) = 1.33, n.s.), whereas the corresponding terms for affective evaluations (F (6, 596) = 4.33, p < 0.001) and brand-related behavior (F (4, 598) = 30.13, p < 0.001) are highly significant.

  10. We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this mediation analysis.

  11. Formally, our specification falls under Multiple Mediation (Model 4) in the PROCESS routine (see Hayes 2012).

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers and the JAMS editor for useful comments and suggestions on a previous version of this paper. The authors also thank the Dr. Theo and Friedl Schöller Research Center for Business and Society for supporting this study.

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  1. University of Vienna, Bruenner Straße 72, 1210, Vienna, Austria

    Marc Florian Herz & Adamantios Diamantopoulos

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  1. Marc Florian Herz
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Correspondence to Marc Florian Herz.

Appendices

Appendix 1

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figure 1

Examples of the stimuli adverts

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Appendix 2

Table 8 Construct definition and measurement
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Herz, M.F., Diamantopoulos, A. Activation of country stereotypes: automaticity, consonance, and impact. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 41, 400–417 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-012-0318-1

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