Country of origin effect and its application to brand strategy: Case of pseudo foreign brands

Abstract

Master thesis is aimed to determine how pseudo foreign brand strategy can effectively use the implemented country of origin effect. COO effect plays significant role in customer’s estimations of the products. Thus, companies have to know how they can use this effect in their brand strategies. This subject is studied trough the example of Russian companies with pseudo foreign brand strategies. The empirical study was dedicated to the examination of how Russian consumers estimate different product categories basing their evaluations only on countries of origin of these products. It was determined that Russian customers estimated home country with rather low COO image. This results in low assessment of perceived quality of Russian products and on unwillingness to pay price premium for them. In addition, particular foreign countries got higher images and their products were assessed higher in specified product categories. So the strategy of pseudo foreign brands appeared to be the logical choice for specific Russian companies. The managerial implications of the study were elaborated in reliance on empirical study results. The proposed approaches of implementation of COO effect in pseudo foreign brand strategies help to effectively use the COO as core element in general and particularly for diminishing negative effect of real country of origin image and bringing new consumer’s associations with desirable image.