Decomposition of Country of Origin Effects in Education Services: A Conjoint Analysis Approach
Research in the area of international marketing has shown that consumers’ assessments of product quality may change (positively/negatively) according to country of manufacture, country of design and/or country of parts of the products. While this notion h
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Abstract Research in the area of international marketing has shown that consumers’ assessments of product quality may change (positively/negatively) according to country of manufacture, country of design and/or country of parts of the products. While this notion has been established in the product context, no research has attempted to isolate similar effects of the country of origin construct in relation to service offerings. This research deconstructs the country of origin (COO) construct for international services along country of origin of the brand (COB), country of origin of where the service is delivered (COSD), and country of origin of the person providing the service (CPI). A total of 143 respondents participated in the online survey undertaken in Australia. The service to be evaluated in the experiment was education service. Results of conjoint analysis in education service confirmed the effects and the importance of the proposed COO dimensions on consumers’ expectations of service quality. More specifically, the experiment revealed that CPI is more important than COB and COSD on consumers’ expectation of service quality. Keywords Country-of-origin
Education Conjoint Service delivery Image
Introduction Today’s products may result from a series of design and production processes in more than one country (so-called hybrid products), hence, the COO of a product can be multiple. For example, a computer can be designed and manufactured in different D. Aruan The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia e-mail: [email protected] R. Crouch (&) School of Marketing and Management, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia e-mail: [email protected] R. Crouch School of Wine and Spirits, Groupe ESC Dijon Bourgogne, Dijon, France © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 C. Plewa and J. Conduit (eds.), Making a Difference Through Marketing, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0464-3_14
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countries so that the product has a different COO in terms of design and manufacturing. In that case, the term ‘COO’ is no longer the same as the country of manufacture. Instead, the product has multiple countries of origin. A number of scholars have examined COO elements such as country of design, country of manufacturing/assembly, country of parts and country of target (Chao 1998, 2001; Essoussi and Merunka 2007; Insch and McBride 1999, 2004). They found that consumers’ perceptions of quality change when a product is manufactured or designed in a country different from its brand origin (Erickson et al. 1984; Han and Terpstra 1988). For example, when a product is manufactured in a country with less reputable image than its brand origin, that information can impact negatively on quality evaluations. On the other hand, when a product from a less reputable image country is designed in a more favourable image country, that information can serve as quality assurance and increase quality evaluation (Chao 2001; Chetty et al. 1999). For example, Ssangyong, a Korean car compan
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