Effects of Country Personality on Foreign General Product Attitude Through Self-Congruity and General Product Country Images in an Emerging Country: An Abstract

Abstract

This research is designed to test the robustness of the country personality (CP) construct in an emerging country – China. It further examines the effects of CP on consumer general product attitude (GPA) through the consumer’s self-congruity and the general country image (GCI) using the structural equation modeling approach. We ask a sample of consumers in China to evaluate four countries: USA, Japan, China, and Turkey.

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The results reveal both the direct effect of CP on GPA and indirect effects through self-congruity and GCI with GCI showing the greatest impact followed by the CP’s rigorous dimension and self-congruity as the mediator. These results suggest significant managerial implications for international marketers. They should focus on building or promoting a more positive GCI either by improving the product or service quality of the country products or the country image as a whole, which can then be leveraged to generate a better GPA. Since self-congruity serves as an effective mediator between CP and GPA, international marketers can focus on promoting a country image to bring CP closer to the self-concept of the consumers in an emerging market. This can in turn affect the GPA indirectly.