Does “Made in …” Also Apply to Services? An Empirical Assessment of the Country-of-Origin Effect in Service Settings

Berentzen, Johannes; Backhaus, Christof; Michaelis, Manuel; Blut, Markus; Ahlert, Dieter

doi:10.1080/15332660802508364

Cited by 33 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Typically, consumer decision and purchase of air travel is highly involved and nonspontaneous. Prior to consumption of airline service, perceived risks associated with IHIP characteristics such as quality expectations and consistency are important challenges to service marketing (Berentzen, Backhaus, Michaelis, Blut, & Ahlert, 2008). Although airline services are becoming much more homogenous, if consumers have never used a service or have no intrinsic information, they still evaluate services by observing extrinsic information cues such as country image that are easier to obtain and observe (Bilkey & Nes, 1982;Zhang & Sood, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Country Image Effect on Services: A Study of Consumers’ Evaluation of Foreign Airlines

Cheng¹,

Chen

Lai

et al. 2014

Journal of Global Marketing

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Refined instruments of multidimensional country image scale are applied along with structural equation modeling (SEM), paired-samples t-test, and compared means statistical techniques to analyze 203 structured questionnaires collected by combining mall-intercept with online surveys to study whether country image effectively influences consumers' quality evaluation of intangible services. The context is airlines from three sourcing countries categorized as developing and developed economy entities. The stream of country image research to date has been disproportionately focused on products. The results of this investigation, based on the theory of reasoned action by using the hierarchy-ofeffects model, demonstrate that a single cue, country image, positively affects consumers' evaluation of intangible services. These results supplement the long disregarded research in services; especially in the ever-increasing globalization of the service sector in the new information-based economy.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Country Image Effect on Services: A Study of Consumers’ Evaluation of Foreign Airlines

Cheng¹,

Chen

Lai

et al. 2014

Journal of Global Marketing

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show abstract

“…A recent study on performing arts [11] found that Indian youth overwhelmingly prefer entertainment content from the US across all categories, have a positive attitude towards UK movies, and high consumption intention for Russian circus. A German study [12] found that buyers of foreign services are likely to form purchase intentions based on alternative quality indicators such as country of origin, brand name, and warranty for safety of banks and budget airlines.…”

Section: Country Of Origin Effects On International Service Providersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Patient Perception and Choice Factors Related to International Hospitals: A Study in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Bucatariu¹,

George²

2017

J Health Med Inform

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In the background of stagnant home markets, health care firms from mature economies are looking for opportunities in developing markets such as Vietnam. Various studies on marketing of health care from developed economies show convenience, specialties, reputation, and word of mouth as major choice factors for hospitals. The limited number of consumer behaviour articles from developing economies has contradictory findings for private and public hospitals with no mention of international hospitals. In this paper, the authors investigate the choice criteria and consumer perceptions of international hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City. Findings imply that younger consumers prefer private care as they suffer from minor illnesses and prioritize convenience, customer service and comfortable facilities. Some older patients are more conservative, seeking government sites due to trust, familiarity and insurance coverage. Irrespective of age and income, all those who experienced international hospitals where left with a lasting positive impression of the caring consultation and staff, modern equipment, and 'VIP feel' of facilities, with price quoted as the main barrier.

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“…When consumers are actually able to use the product (post-consumption), the real performance is used to judge the quality of the product. Research also suggests that the COO effect ceases to matter when consumers actually experience the product (Ahmed et al 2002;Berentzen et al 2008;Ueltschy 1998). Therefore, extending the above findings to services context, if two service providers provide exactly equal service on all dimensions, their evaluation should also be equal irrespective of COO.…”

Section: Country-of-origin Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foreign or domestic: who provides better customer service?

Poddar

Ozcan

Madupalli

2015

Journal of Services Marketing

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of customer service employees’ (CSEs) competence and service recovery outcomes on service evaluations of foreign and domestic CSEs. Design/methodology/approach – Three experiments were conducted to test and validate the proposed hypotheses. The participants were told a cover story that they were either listening to (Study 2) or reading (Studies 1 and 3) a real conversation between a customer service representative of a bank and a customer and the authors wanted their views about the service encounter. While country of origin (COO) and competency were common independent variables across three studies, Study 2 included service recovery with a full refund and Study 3 had both full and partial refund and apology offered or not. Findings – Results from three experiments show that while competent CSEs are evaluated the same, regardless of their COO, the domestic CSE is evaluated more negatively than the foreign CSE when both are incompetent. The authors also find that when competent CSEs deliver no service recovery, the foreign CSE evaluations are significantly lower than the domestic one. Study 3 results show that this effect is mediated by participants’ ethnocentric beliefs. Research limitations/implications – For implications, this study provides a deeper understanding of the role of COO in services contexts. Future researchers can utilize the findings to investigate the important role that expectations play in determining service excellence and how it affects the COO effect. Practical implications – The paper provides managers in both offshoring client and provider firms with an understanding of the effects of offshoring on employee evaluations. It discusses the relevance/irrelevance of COO on the customer evaluations of service employees. Originality/value – The study investigates an under researched phenomenon – offshoring of services. This paper is one of the few looking at the role of different interaction factors, such as competence, recovery on service evaluations.

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Does “Made in …” Also Apply to Services? An Empirical Assessment of the Country-of-Origin Effect in Service Settings

Cited by 33 publications

References 38 publications

Country Image Effect on Services: A Study of Consumers’ Evaluation of Foreign Airlines

Country Image Effect on Services: A Study of Consumers’ Evaluation of Foreign Airlines

Patient Perception and Choice Factors Related to International Hospitals: A Study in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Foreign or domestic: who provides better customer service?

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