Countering negative country-of-origin with low prices: a conjoint study in Vietnam

Purpose - Aims to view two key issues, the importance of country-of-origin (COO) and perceptions of individual brands across different segments of consumers, and whether price cutting helps overcome negative perceptions. Design/methodology/approach - Uses conjoint methods to investigate whether low prices can be used to overcome negative images for TVs among Vietnamese consumers. Findings - The results show that price cuts by the Korean brands do little to attract customers away from the higher perceived quality Japanese brands. Perceived quality differentials are too large to gain most customers who buy Japanese brands at any realistic level of price cuts. Originality/value - While most non-Japanese Asian brands have not yet built strongly positive brand images, there are now some, such as Acer, which are making quite good progress, so there are some examples to examine. Future research should focus on which tactics a brand with negative COO image could use to build a stronger association with quality.