Foreign Branding and Its Effects on Product Perceptions and Attitudes: A Replication and Extension in A Multicultural Setting

Abstract

A recent contribution to research on country-of-origin (COO) effects on product evaluations was made by Leclerc, Schmitt and Dube-Riox (1994) who found that foreign branding - spelling out or pronouncing a brand name in a foreign language - influences consumers’ perceptions and attitudes. This study attempted to replicate and extend their findings using similar stimuli and 266 undergraduate students (146 male, 120 female) from a major Canadian university.Only partial support was found for a foreign branding effect, though there were significant gender effects, e.g. with respect to liking for the brand name. Overall, the findings suggest that while foreign branding-affects product evaluations more than COO, the uni-cultural or multi-cultural nature of the research context is influential in determining which brands are seen as ‘foreign’.