Dean reviews The Construction of Optimal Stated Choice Experiments: Theory and Methods by Deborah J. Street and Leonie Burgess.

The Construction of Optimal Stated Choice Experiments: Theory and Methods

Traditional country-of-origin strategy in international marketing uses a country-image halo to cue beliefs about the country’s products. With expansive trade globalization, domestic consumers are likely to have experience with foreign products but know little of the products’ origin country. Thus, equally important as traditional theory is the question of whether product beliefs can imbue country image, but little is known of this reverse influence. If product beliefs can generalize into a favorable country image, a chain effect will then enable traditional country-of-origin effects to benefit the country’s other products. In this study, the results of three surveys across two countries show that product beliefs can indeed influence country image. However, the influence weakens with increasing country familiarity and exists only when the product and country are congruent. Furthermore, the influence can operate outside of conscious awareness. The authors draw on the associative network theory of memory to ...

A Memory-Theory Perspective of Country-Image Formation:

West versus East: Measuring the development of Chinese wine preferences

This study seeks to understand the specific factors on social media that help drive the intention to purchase fashion-related products, focusing on the central role of trust. The unique contribution of this research lies in its exploration of the interplay between perceived usefulness of the fashion brand's social media and peer communication on the fashion brand's social media in driving trust in the fashion brand's social media and, ultimately, purchase intention. Theoretically, we combine the technology acceptance model and consumer socialisation theory to explore the mediating role of trust in a rapidly expanding and growing industry sector. In surveying 150 Europeans to test our hypotheses around the aforementioned concepts, findings show that the perceived usefulness of a brand's social media is impacted by a set of atmospheric cues, and it influences the level of trust in both the fashion brand and its social media channels. Peer communication also influences perceived usefulness and level of trust in both the fashion brand and its social media channels. Trust in the brand but not its social media channels impacts purchase intention. The role of privacy concerns is limited in our model. We draw implications for theory around combining consumer socialisation theory and the technology acceptance model and for managers around parallel strategies to build different sets of trust on social media.

How trust leads to online purchase intention founded in perceived usefulness and peer communication

The authors of this study investigate online game consumption in Korea and China, the two key Asian markets, to analyze relationships among country of origin (COO), brand image, belief toward online games, and perceived game quality. Perceived game quality includes three dimensions of quality: product quality, service quality, and gratification quality. The authors survey 355 Korean and Chinese online game users and find that brand image influences quality perceptions directly or indirectly through brand belief. Compared with brand image, COO seems to have indirect and weaker effects on perceptions of game quality. The multigroup research model reveals several cross-country differences. COO significantly affects beliefs in China but not in Korea. Brand image more highly impacts brand beliefs in Korea than it does in China. To signal superior product or service quality to Chinese users, game developers should highlight COO along with other product information. To appeal to Korean users, game developers should strengthen symbolic aspects of brand image because Koreans react more positively to brand personality, brand content, and corporate identity. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Country of origin and brand image influences on perceptions of online game quality

In international marketing, countries are often conceptualised as image constructs that have an influence on product image formation. Destination image and country of origin image are held to account for bias in consumer perceptions towards products because of the country from which they originate. Studies in these areas are typically underpinned by attitude-based Likert or semantic differential scale methods, analysed using structural equation models. This paper achieves two key outcomes. Firstly, it adds to the small but growing body of literature that looks at the impact of tourism on post-tour, export product evaluations. Secondly, it compares this traditional attitude-based approach to country-image studies with an alternative associative network theory approach, operationalised with a free-choice, pick-any survey method, which is popular within the branding literature. We compare the two methods by applying each to the same set of respondents to establish if the two methods are complementary, and find they produce different outcomes that could have critical implications for how country-image studies are conceptualised and executed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Old dogs, new tricks - rethinking country-image studies.

Wine and tourism are seen as good bedfellows, and rightly so. Globally the wine industry is increasingly dependent on leisure and tourist visitors to sustain the growth of local and export sales, both in terms of immediate turnover from “cellar door” transactions and as a long-term image generating mechanism (Lockshin, 2001). Growing interest, both applied and academic, in wine tourism as an industry is indicative of the fact both practitioners and researchers consider it an important contributor to continued success for wine producers (Bruwer & Lesschaeve, 2012). However, only a relatively small percentage of the total international visitors to a country actually visit a winery when on holiday (Department of Industry Tourism and Resources, 2009).

Wine and Tourism: A Good Blend Goes a Long Way

Grounded in random utility theory, discrete choice experiments (DCE) have proven to be effective in uncovering consumers' choice preferences and switching patterns for repeated choice. Despite this efficacy, a key shortcoming of a DCE is that it does not allow simultaneous comparisons across separate experiments, such as for different product categories, even if both experiments use the same respondents. While wider modelling in a single DCE can use interaction terms as a workaround method to compare across experiments, comparing partworth estimates of separate DCEs is problematic. This study illustrates the use of structural choice modelling (SCM), a recent development that incorporates latent variables and structural equations into the analyses of DCEs and more generally into choice processes. SCM makes it possible to evaluate the consistencies (i.e. heterogeneity) of preferences for attributes common across multiple DCEs when applied to the same respondents, thereby overcoming the stated DCEs' weakness.

A demonstration of structural choice modelling in a market research context

Purpose Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries mobilising millions of travellers every year to visit countries far and wide. What if exporters could effectively target this travelling consumer cohort? In this paper we consider the influence that experiencing a country as a tour destination has on perceptions of products produced in that country and the intention to purchase those products in the future. Design/methodology/approach We draw on Associative Network Theory (ANT) to offer a rationale as to how and why a country’s Tour Destination Image (TDI) may play an important role in promoting its export products. This provides an alternative model and theoretical basis to those studies that have traditionally underpinned Country of Origin Image (COI) and Tour Destination Image (TDI) studies with more linear cognitive processing theories. We test this by tapping the tour destination images, preference for and intention to purchase Australian wine of Chinese tourists in Australia and compare them to Chinese consumers in China Findings The results of this study provide evidentiary support to our proposed use of ANT, and the influence that TDI may have on purchase behaviours.

Jasha Bowe

Papers

Old dogs, new tricks - rethinking country-image studies.

Wine and Tourism: A Good Blend Goes a Long Way

A demonstration of structural choice modelling in a market research context

The Influence of Tour Destination Image on Chinese consumers preference for Australian Wine