The world is becoming a unified market system and the chinese consumers are facing increasingly numerous commodities of the other countries. What a role the country image will play in the chinese purchasing process is a pending question. In this study...
The world is becoming a unified market system and the chinese consumers are facing increasingly numerous commodities of the other countries. What a role the country image will play in the chinese purchasing process is a pending question. In this study, the country image is added as a new variable into the model based on the model of Fishbein behavior intention. And in the view of this modified model, this study discusses country image effects on consumers' purchasing intention in China' market.
At present, how to measure the country image has not reached a consensus in this academic field . Therefore, an initial country image scale, based on previous studies, is first suggested in this study, Then by using the method of the exploratory factor analysis and conformity factor analysis, a refined country image scale is required. Finally, the refined country image scale is added as a new variable into the model of Fishbein behavior intention. This study uses structural equation model to determine the coefficients between the variables and the degree of effects and uses multivariate analysis of variance to understand the differences of mean vales between the different groups. In the end a sufficient interpretation is made for such differences.
This research discovers that consumers’ perception of country images can be divided into four parts in general: “appraise of the relationship with China”, “degree of country development”, “appraise of products as a whole”, and “appraise of people as a whole”. There are significant differences in consumers’ perception of different country images, in which Germany’s image gets the best appraise, America and Korea’s in the next place, and Japan's in the last. Country image has no direct effects on consumers' purchasing intention, but it has effects on consumers’ purchasing intention indirectly through having effects on functional appraise and symbolistic appraise of products. Effect coefficients are different from each other because of different countries and different products, but they are all between 0.44 and 0.67 basically. So, consumers’ purchasing intention ranges highest in Germany’s products, in the next place in America’s and Korea’s and lowest in Japan’s.
The innovation of this research lies in bringing country image as a new variable into the model of Fishbein behavior intention as well as exploring country image’s effects on consumers' purchasing intention. There are also new findings of the research results that country image’s effects on functional appraise of products is higher than symbolistic appraise of products significantly, and the symbolistic appraise of products has greater general effects on consumers' purchasing intention than functional appraise of products significantly.
According to the results of this study, suggestions are made on how to establish a favorable country image for foreign governments and how to avoid the negative country image for foreign companies. Suggestions are also made on how to enhance China's country image for chinese governments and how to use other countries' image to enhance their own marketing competitiveness for Chinese enterprises.