The automatic country-of-origin effects on brand judgments

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that country stereotypes can be spontaneously activated by the mere presence of country-of-origin (COO) information in the environment, and they may influence product judgments even when consumers do not intend to base their judgments on COO. Participants learned the attributes of a set of brands from advertisements, and categorized each brand as good or bad by using a simple attribute rule. Results indicate that the accuracy of participants' categorization decisions was influenced by their intentional use of the attribute rule and the country stereotypes that were activated automatically by COO cues presented during categorization. This study also employed the process dissociation procedure to generate quantitative estimates of the two sources of influence. The results provide converging evidence that COO effects occurred automatically and contributed to product evaluations without participants' intention or control.