The Impact of Country-of-Origin and Joy on Product Evaluation: A Comparison of Chinese and German Intimate Apparel

Consumer’s differentiated perception and appraisal of a product’s country-of-origin (COO) exerts large influence on perception of the COO-image (COI) and on the perceived product quality. At peripheral information processing COO-Image (COI) provides a basis to ease requirements for information processing in form of heuristics. Most of internationalization literature examines the COO effect with respect to high-involvement products and in context of cognitive processing. However studies from Maheswaran and Chen (2006) point out, that besides cognitive influences, also specific emotions impact on COO-effects. Whereas the influence of negative emotions like anger, sadness or frustration on processing and judgments could be exposed, the issue of positive emotions’ impact still stays open. Since the question should be answered, if emotions impact on COO-Effects, it is emphasized to focus on COO as an affective heuristic operating as a “halo” effect on attitudes towards a product. Because both marketing and evolutionary theories of emotion act on the assumption of satisfaction of human needs, latter is specified, describing emotions as complex chains of events with stabilizing feedback loops. Particularly, in the context of impulsive purchasing emotion plays a vital role. Impulsive buyers are more emotionalized, experiencing more enthusiasm, joy, and glee than nonbuyers. Thus “joy” leads to impulsive decision making behavior. Drawing on the extant literature, we develop our conceptual framework to analyze whether, and if so, how positive emotions (such as joy) affect the impact of COO on product evaluation. Based on an experimental study including 130 respondents, we test three hypotheses: whether the COO has an impact on product evaluation (H1), whether the positive emotion of joy has a stronger positive influence on product evaluation than neutral emotional states (H2), and whether the positive emotion of joy reduces the positive relationship of COO on product evaluation (H3). In the experimental design, it is hypothesized that the latent variable Emotion impacts on the latent variable COI and in addition that these latent variables, both influence beliefs towards the product in terms of a halo effect. Latent variables in each case get measured with manifested variables in form of validated scales. Cause-and-effect relations are revealed in an experiment concerning a factorial test arrangement with a 2x2 factor design, consisting of two COOs (China vs. Germany) and two emotional states (joy vs. neutral state). Complex pictures from International Affective Picture System state standardized stimuli obtaining specific emotions. The apparel industry serves as the product category used in the experiment because impulsive buying behavior is quite common in this product category. Moreover, we chose women as respondents because they rather purchase for emotional and relationship-oriented reasons. Products get labeled with woven tags and tags at clothes hangers manipulating COO. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) can be counted among the most important analysis methods in marketing research and is used for analysis, with emotional state and COO being the independent variables and product evaluation as the dependent variable. Prior to probing hypothesized assumptions a manipulation check concerning induced emotions was successful. Participants primed with the joyful IAPS checked a significantly higher percentage of positive adjectives than respondents primed with the neutral IAPS (joyful=.76, neutral =.61; F=7.59, p<.001). Also the used scale of Product Evaluation could be validated by confirmatory factor analysis. The main effect of emotion is highly significant for product evaluation. Following Cohen (1988), the strength of the effects is large (η2 = 10.8%). Product evaluation is influenced by a highly significant interaction effect (Emotion * COO, EtaSquare: 6.2%). COO has a significant influence on product evaluation giving support for H1. Furthermore respondents in a joyful state evaluate the product significantly better than respondents in a neutral state (MVJoy=4.89 vs. MVNeutral=4.33, F=11.359, p<.001). This finding confirms our hypothesis H2. Since the product evaluation is influenced by an interaction effect, the impact of COO must be analyzed in both cases for (1) joy and (2) neutral state. In a neutral emotional state respondents evaluate products of German origin (MV=4.73) significantly better compared to a Chinese COO (MV=3.94). In contrast to this, COO does not affect product evaluation when the respondent is in a joyful mood: The Chinese product (MV=4.89) is evaluated better than the German product (MV= 4.87). However, the difference is not statistically significant. This finding confirms hypothesis H3. This survey increases acknowledgement concerning emotional impacts on perception of COO serving as affective heuristic, because during induction of joyful emotional states a tendency towards an alleviated COO-Effect is demonstrated. Thus emotion impacts on perception of COO information at such a rate that poor COIs can be valorized, while beneficial domestic COIs rather level off. Insights for retailers and manufacturers’ brand management are that they should pay attention to consumer’s emotional state while developing foreign markets. They have to continually encourage consumers’ positive emotion through store design, product displays, package designs and sales in order to valorize poor COIs. Contrariwise brand management from manufacturers offering brands, featuring beneficial COIs should mind that encouraging consumers’ positive emotions by recommended actions, impacts on apparel featuring poor COIs in superior manner.