Postentry Branding Strategy Affecting Purchase Intention in a Country-Related Product Association Context : Evidence from Korean Consumers

It seems common sense that a product’s country-of-origin affects consumers’ purchase decisions. Nonetheless, prior studies do not satisfactorily address how postentry branding strategy affects consumer purchase intentions in a country-related product association context. Based on the perspective of country-of-origin, the current study aims to explore the effect of postentry branding strategy on consumer purchase intentions in a country-related product association context. An experimental study is conducted in a host country market with country-related product associations in terms of cars. A 3 (postentry branding strategies: foreign brand, and foreign-local co-brand, and local-foreign co-brand) × 2 (country-related product associations: strong favorable vs. unfavorable) between-subjects factorial design is used. The results of the experiment present that in a low country-related product association, consumers prefer the foreign products with local-foreign co-brands to ones with the other brand types. In contrast, in a high country-related product association, there is little difference of consumers’ purchase intention among postentry branding strategies. The present study provides empirical evidence on how country-related product associations can affect consumers’ purchase intention of foreign products with respect to the types of postentry branding strategies. The study proposes that international marketers carefully seek out postentry branding strategies appropriate to the country-related product associations in order to yield positive outcomes in a host country market.