Country of Origin Image Appeals and the Purchase Propensity of Consumers : An experimental study

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how dimensions of Country of Origin Image (COI) can impact the purchase propensity of consumers. Drawing on the literature of international marketing, consumer behaviour, and social psychology, an experiment with a three-product category (experiential, functional, and symbolic) was designed to analyse purchase propensity of Swedish consumers for Brazilian products. To collect the data, Swedish consumers divided into three groups were part of the experiment. Each group had contact with one product category having five advertisements with different appeals, answering a survey sent via e-mail. Overall, COI appeals was found to have a higher purchase propensity benefit than no COI. Evidence was found that dimensions have different purchase propensity benefit among the product categories. The findings offer evidence that in a cultural distance setting, COI appeals should be implemented for the increase of purchase propensity, with adaptation based on context.