Overcoming a Negative Country-of-Origin Effect

In 1887 the English government passed a law requiring products manufactured outside of England to be labeled with their country of origin in order to protect British products from foreign copycats of lower quality. And still today, the label “Made in… ” — despite its brevity — likely has one of the most significant impacts on people’s perceptions, value attribution and purchasing behavior across a wide range of product categories. This is true from a positive as well as a negative point of view. As more manufacturing has moved to developing countries, even brands that are among the strongest in the world — such as Apple — fear the (negative) impact of this short label and prefer, as in this case, to print “Designed by Apple in California” on their products, before adding the “Assembled in China” label. Certain countries stand for excellence in specific product categories, such as Belgium for chocolate, or France for wine. Germany has built such a strong country image for engineering and car manufacturing — so much that French car maker Citroën created a parody TV ad campaign in 2008 claiming its C5 model was “unmistakably German.” While this is a rather funny anecdote, it demonstrates how strong country images are known to influence consumers’ perception of a company’s products and services.