Overcoming a Negative Country-of-Origin Effect

Abstract

In 1887 the English government passed a law requiring products manufactured outside of England to be labeled with their country of origin in order to protect British products from foreign copycats of lower quality. And still today, the label “Made in… ” — despite its brevity — likely has one of the most significant impacts on people’s perceptions, value attribution and purchasing behavior across a wide range of product categories. This is true from a positive as well as a negative point of view. As more manufacturing has moved to developing countries, even brands that are among the strongest in the world — such as Apple — fear the (negative) impact of this short label and prefer, as in this case, to print “Designed by Apple in California” on their products, before adding the “Assembled in China” label. Certain countries stand for excellence in specific product categories, such as Belgium for chocolate, or France for wine. Germany has built such a strong country image for engineering and car manufacturing — so much that French car maker Citroën created a parody TV ad campaign in 2008 claiming its C5 model was “unmistakably German.” While this is a rather funny anecdote, it demonstrates how strong country images are known to influence consumers’ perception of a company’s products and services.

Laser Diagnostic Instruments’ NarTest technology aimed to fill the gap between a manual drug search and laboratory analysis, answering the need for a rapid conclusive result with basic lab-based analysis of the substance. As of 2011, the NarTest NTX2000 device was the only photonic-based analyzer capable of testing for drugs outside of a traditional laboratory. The device had the ability to detect six types of illegal drugs (heroin, cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy, amphetamine and methamphetamine) with 99.6% accuracy. It was handheld and portable and able to produce results within 5 to 15 minutes in any environment. It could be powered from a car battery and only required a half day of training to be used. It was estimated that law enforcement agencies could save up to 90% by using the device versus conducting tests in a standard laboratory. LDI had introduced a novel drug analyzing technology to the law enforcement system in the United States in 2006 which had been used in thousands of cases. However, in 2010 came a severe drawback when in a court case in North Carolina, the Court of Appeals rejected the use of their NarTest NTX2000 on account of unreliability. The lawyer representing the drug dealer had reportedly challenged the technology, referring to the device as “voodoo sorcery” because it was invented in the “East” and “does not contain any science behind it.”

Source: CASE 7: Estonia’s Laser Diagnostic Instruments (LDI) AS: Beaming toward Growth; p. 210