Country-of-Origin Effects and Global Brand Trust: A First Look

ABSTRACT

This article reports the results of a global survey that explored the relationship between country of origin and brand trust in 22 product categories. The product categories of interest ranged from high involvement, durable goods (refrigerators, washing machines) to low involvement, fast moving consumer goods (chocolate bars, yogurt, disposable batteries). Respondents included consumers from the United States, Nepal, India, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria. Country-of-origin effects yielded the research's most interesting finding: Global brands might have a regional, or meso level, component which brand trust has uncovered for the first time.

KEYWORDS:

• Country of origin
• brand trust
• global marketing
• consumer behavior

INTRODUCTION

In 1991, Jean-Noel Kapferer asked the provocative question: How global are global brands? While there has been no definitive answer to Kapferer's question to date, there has been significant research to understand the complex issues that underpin global brands. This research continues to look at that question and does so by focusing on the issue of brand trust.

Levitt (1983) outlined the basic logic for a global brand: that as global markets converged, due to the unrelenting forces of globalization, consumers will want “standardized consumer products on a previously unimagined scale of magnitudes” (p. 20). Firms that developed global products would then benefit from significant economies of scale since “everywhere everything gets more and more like everything else as the world's preference structure is relentlessly homogenized” (Levitt, 1983, p. 24). Part of Levitt's formulation is true: Markets have globalized. Continuing developments in computer information technology, when coupled with the global reach of the Internet, have spelled “the death of distance” (Cairncross, 1995, p. 5). In a “flat world,” the barriers between developed and developing economies are reduced (Friedman, 2005). Products and brands are free to “travel the world” in search of new markets and new consumers. Yet, there is still debate about whether globally standardized products and their accompanying branding strategies can ever achieve the uniformity and the “economics of simplicity” that Levitt so fervently espoused (Levitt, 1983, p. 27). As Holt, Quelch, and Taylor (2004) stated, “It's time to rethink global branding” (p. 68).

The research reported here extends the discussion about global brands by analyzing the relationship between country of origin (COO) and brand trust. While COO is a well-researched global marketing topic, the relationship of COO to brand trust is not. Further, this research adds consumer perception data from two areas underreported in the branding literature, Nepal and Eastern Europe, to data from primarily U.S. consumers. Lastly, the research takes a multiple category approach toward exploring the importance of global brands. We asked respondents to evaluate the importance of both COO and brand trust across 22 different product categories.

Global Brands

Many researchers use the term “global brand” without defining it (Kapferer, 2005; Holt, Quelch, & Taylor, 2004; Nebenzahl & Jaffe, 1996; Pharr, 2005; Quelch, 1999; Tse & Gorn, 1993; van Gelder, 2003). “The stickiest problem … seems to be the difficulty of defining what is ‘global’ and what is not” (Johansson & Ronkainen, 2005, p. 340). Two definitional perspectives are found in the literature. One set of definitions takes a producer perspective, while the other takes a consumer perspective. Cateora and Graham's (2007) definition clearly embodies the producer perspective. A global brand is “the worldwide use of name, term, sign, symbol (visual and/or auditory), design or combination therefore intended to identify goods or services of one seller and to differentiate them from those of competitors” (p. 360). For Cateroa and Graham (2007), a global brand is a product or service with uniform characteristics (name, sign, and symbol) sold in multiple countries.

Barron and Hollingshead's (2004) definition likewise takes the producer's perspective, since its focus is on the tasks that sellers must do to communicate a global brand position. For them, a global brand is one that “expresses the same values in all of its markets and owns a similar position vis-à-vis its competitors around the world” (Barron & Hollingshead, 2004, p. 9). By defining a global brand in terms of values and positioning, Barron and Hollingshead extend the global brand definition into elements of a consistent marketplace position, wherever in the world the product is sold. This universal platform gives the global brand several advantages including increased leverage with channel partners, economies of scale and increased revenue.

Steenkamp, Batra, and Alden (2003), in contrast, take a decidedly consumer-focused perspective when defining a global brand. A global brand for them is any brand that consumers perceive to be global. “A brand benefits from consumer perceptions that it is ‘global’… only if consumers believe the brand is marketed in multiple countries and is generally recognized as global in these countries” (p. 54). They term this perspective “perceived brand globalness.” Johansson and Ronkainen (2005) integrate both producer and consumer perspectives into their definition. A global brand is defined as “the multi-market reach of products that are perceived as the same by both consumers and internal constituents” (p. 340). Our approach, outlined below, follows Steenkamp, Batra, and Alden's (2003) perceived brand globalness and the more recent research of Dimofte, Johansson, and Ronkainen (2008). Steenkamp, Batra, and Alden (2003) state, “The issue here is whether a brand benefits from consumer perceptions that it is ‘global”’ (emphasis in original; 2003, p. 54). Extending that approach, Dimofte, Johansson, and Ronkainen (2008) assert, “In order to get a true sense of what a global brand might stand for in the consumer's mind, we avoided defining what a global brand is and thus imposing our own interpretation onto respondents' opinions. The notion was simply to get to the unbiased, top-of-the-mind awareness of the concept” (p. 117). Similarly, our approach did not impose an a priori definition of what “a global brand” is or is not. If a survey respondent thought a brand was global, then it was. We believe, in fact, that this consumer-focused, emergent approached lead directly to this study's most intriguing finding: That there may be a meso, or regional, dimension to global brands.

Global brand benefits can be divided into benefits to the producer and benefits to the consumer. For the firm, a global brand provides economies of scale (as Levitt, 1983, proposed); opportunities to establish a worldwide identity (Hsieh, 2002); a cost-efficient platform for global line and brand extensions; a consistent positioning strategy; promotion synergies; global organizational learning opportunities, and human capital benefits that are gained through recruitment and retention of talented individuals committed to global branding activities (Quelch, 1999). For consumers, a global brand provides higher perceived quality, greater prestige, higher status, and reflects greater esteem (Johansson & Ronkainen, 2005) than local/domestic brands. Holt, Quelch, and Taylor (2004) found that global brands, in addition to being quality signals, were symbols of cultural ideals that were representatives of socially responsible actions and often embodied American values.

Country of Origin

COO is a well-researched global marketing topic. In mid-1997, Heslop, Papadopoulos, and Bourke (1998) estimated that there were over 300 COO-related studies. By the time Pharr (2005) conducted her extensive literature review, the COO literature had increased to well over 700 studies. Hsieh (2004) suggested that COO “definitions can be classified into three groups: overall country image, aggregate product-country image, and specific product–country image” (p. 269).

In Hseih's (2004) framework, “overall country image” relates to the stereotypes and generalized attitudes individuals have about a specific country. Russia's overall country image, for example, might be thought of as a Communist, repressive, poor, backward, and monotone country. In contrast, “aggregate product-country image” and “specific product-country image” refer to the COO attitudes individuals hold at the level of product category and individual brand level, respectively. Aggregate product-country image is tapped when individuals evaluate “the made in” label, such as computers made in Malaysia. Specific product-country image is evoked when consumers evaluate a brand, such as a Porsche Cayenne made in Slovakia. More recently, Pappu, Quester, and Cooksey (2006) simplified Hseih's framework into just macro and micro country image.

Pharr (2005) noted that over the years, COO research has been refined into a nuanced concept that now includes Hofstede's work on culture, brand image, brand name, consumer levels of involvement, country stereotypes, quality/price relationships, and differentiation (if possible) between country of assembly, country of parts, and country of design. COO has also been studied in developed as well as in developing countries (Bilkey & Nes, 1982; Lee, Yun, & Lee, 2005; Speece & Nguyen, 2005). Additionally, scholars have tried to understand how COO effects perceived product value (Cervino, Sanchez, & Cubillo, 2005; Hui & Zhou, 2002), brand image, and brand equity (Lin & Kao, 2004; Pappu, Quester, & Cooksey, 2007).

Consumer ethnocentrism can act as a mediating variable in any COO evaluation. Following the definition first used by Shimp and Sharma (1987), consumer ethnocentrism is the belief held by consumers about “the appropriateness, indeed morality, of purchasing foreign products” (p. 280). Consumer ethnocentrism is a systematic preference favoring purchase of domestic over foreign products. Consumer ethnocentrism is more contemporaneously termed “domestic country bias” (Balabanis & Diamantopoulos, 2004, p. 80). Empirical research has identified differences in domestic country bias between consumers living in developed versus developing countries (Batra, Ramaswamy, Alden, Steenkamp, & Ramachander, 2000; Upadhyay & Singh, 2006). The former clearly favored domestic over foreign products, while the latter favored the opposite. Research by Bawa (2004) indicated that contrary to earlier findings that consumers from developing countries were biased toward imported over domestic products, “the label ‘made in India’ is not a liability. The Indian consumers will not lap up foreign goods merely because of their ‘made in’ tags” (p. 43).

Pharr (2005) developed a holistic, COO model that integrated most of the antecedent, moderating, and outcome variables outlined above. Whatever the research focus, though, COO is inevitably linked with trying to understand how COO mediates product evaluation and consumer purchase intention (Pharr, 2005; Usunier & Cestre, 2007).

Recently, another stream of research has explored the accuracy of consumer COO attribution. Samiee, Shimp, and Sharma (2005)found that (a) consumers varied in their accurate recognition of a brand's true COO, and (b) respondents inferred COO by associating the brand name with a language thought to be representative of a specific country. They postulated a new construct called “brand origin recognition accuracy.” Anderson Analytics (2007) extended Samiee, Shimp, and Sharma's findings. Their research used a representative sample of 1,000 college and university students enrolled in 375 different United States institutions and found that students often inaccurately identified the COO for well-known brands. For example, 53% of the sample thought Nokia to be a Japanese company rather than a Finnish one, and 48.5% of respondents identified Adidas' COO as the United States as opposed to Germany (Weiss, 2007).

COO remains a complex construct. It is not possible to choose one set of variables over another to develop a uniform perspective. Research that has begun to explore consumer accuracy in their COO perceptions may well be a key pivot point. For the marketing pragmatist, a consumer perception of where a product or service is thought to be from is what matters. Strategy evolves from that data point.

Brand Trust

Trust is an elusive concept (Elliot & Percy, 2007) and can be thought of as an individual characteristic, as a characteristic of interpersonal relations, and/or as an institutional attribute (Lewicki & Bunker, 1995). Trust is also a nuanced concept that has familiarity as its precondition (Luhmann, 1979). There are multiple definitions of trust. Rotter (1971) defined trust as “a generalized expectancy held by an individual or group that a word, promise, verbal or written statement of another individual or group can be relied on” (p. 1). Barney and Hansen (1994) add the idea of hurt and harm when they defined trust as “The mutual confidence that no party to an exchange will exploit another's vulnerabilities” (p. 176). Finally, Battacharrya, Devinney, and Pilluta (1998) highlight the protective nature of trust when they defined trust as “an expectancy of positive (or nonnegative) outcomes that one can receive based on the expected action of another party in an interaction characterized by uncertainty” (p. 462). Trust thus involves commitment, risk, and mutuality. Trust is also a dynamic concept that is always contingent. “The amount of knowledge necessary for trust is somewhere between total knowledge and total ignorance. Given total knowledge there is no need for trust and given total ignorance there is no basis upon which to rationally trust” (McAllister, 1995, p. 26).

Relationship marketing has further encouraged the transfer and application of trust to brands (Romaniuk & Bogomolova, 2005; Fournier, 1998). This led Delgado-Ballester, Munera-Alemain, and Yague-Gullien (2003) to define brand trust as “The confident expectations of the brand's reliability and intentions in situations entailing risk to the consumer” (p. 37). Brand trust has also been defined as “the confidence a consumer develops in the brand's reliability and integrity” (Chatterjee & Chaudhuri, 2005, p. 2). Brand trust has been linked with brand loyalty (Lau & Lee, 1999) as well as increased market share and advertising efficiency (Chatterjee & Chaudhuri, 2005). Brand trust has also been hypothesized to be leading indicator of brand equity (Ambler, 1997).

Of recent interest has been the question of whether brands vary in terms of trust. Romaniuk and Bogomolova (2005) studied this question by controlling for brand size effects when they assessed trust scores of 110 local brands in 13 markets in subjects living in the United Kingdom and Australia. They found little variation in brand trust scores when controlling for market share. They concluded that “trust is more like a ‘hygiene’ factor in that all brands have to have a certain level of trust to be competitive in the market” (Romaniuk & Bogomolova, 2005, p. 371). If brands do not vary greatly in terms of trust, would the same hold true when consumers were asked to evaluate specifically their trust in a global brand?

The goal of this article is to examine the notions of global brands, “perceived brand globalness,” COO, consumer ethnocentrism, and brand trust to determine how the interactions of these factors will affect global marketing strategy.

Methodology

Survey respondents were recruited through educational institutions in the United States, Nepal, India, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Bulgaria. Foreign educational institutions were chosen because they afforded us direct access to English speaking students (the survey instrument was written in English) and because of our belief that these technologically adept students would have significant knowledge of global brands. In Nepal, the Czech Republic, and the United States, several educational institutions were used to avoid sampling bias. Only one educational institution was used in both Bulgaria and Poland, which we recognize as a research design limitation. Students attending these educational institutions were asked by their professors to participate in the research. The survey instrument was electronically posted to facilitate data collection. Only students in the selected educational institutions had access to the online survey.

The survey had three parts. Part 1 asked respondents to evaluate the importance of buying a global brand in each of 22 different consumer categories. Our approach mirrored that of Steenkamp, Batra, and Alden (2003) in the use of perceived brand globalness. We told respondents that “a global brand is one that you think is found or sold in several countries around the world.” A 7-point Likert scale (anchored with “very unimportant” and “very important”) was used to capture level of importance. We developed the product categories to span a range of dimensions: 1) high and low involvement product categories (computers versus candy bars); 2) durable versus nondurable products (washing machines and coffee); and 3) categories not often reported in the marketing literature (e.g., disposable batteries, motorcycles and clothes dryers). Table 1 lists all 22 product categories.

TABLE 1 Product Categories Explored

A bank checking account	VHS player	Clothes dryer
Shampoo	Refrigerator	Personal credit card
Disposable batteries	Soft drink	Mobile phone
Hamburger—fast food	Motorcycle	Coffee
Home computer	Toothpaste	Bottled drinking water
DVD player	Washing machine	Jeans
Running shoes	TV
Chocolate candy bar	Yogurt

Part 2 of the survey asked respondents to evaluate COO and brand trust. This was a forced choice question. For each of the 22 product categories listed in Table 1, respondents were asked to choose the one country that their most trusted brand(s) came from. We limited country choice to China, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Japan, South Korea, and the United States because we knew that at least one global brand from each category in Table 1 came from at least one of the listed countries. Respondents could note if the brand(s) they trusted most came from a country not listed.

Part 3 of the survey collected basic demographic information: age, gender, home country, employment status, highest education level, and whether the respondent was living outside their home country when taking the survey. The entire survey was written in English.

We pretested the online survey by having colleagues review and critique it. Based on their feedback, we revised the survey by deleting some of the original product categories and adding others. Additionally, colleagues confirmed that all product categories had a single meaning. We posted the survey on SurveyMonkey.com, an online survey Web site. The survey's first page assured all respondents that their answers would be kept confidential and that the identity of every respondent would remain anonymous. Data were collected from 2007 through 2008.

RESULTS

A total of 292 individuals, residing in over a dozen different countries, took the survey. Almost 95% of the respondents came from six countries: United States (42.3%), Nepal (27.9%), Poland (10%), Czech Republic (8.1%), Bulgaria (7.4%), and India (6.3%). Size effects become more balanced when respondents were grouped by regions. When respondents from India and Nepal are combined into a South Asia group, they comprise 34.2% of the sample. Similarly, when Polish, Czech, and Bulgarian respondents are combined into an Eastern Europe group, they comprise 25.5% of the total. Such regional grouping is further supported by Rugman (2005), Rugman and Verbeke (2008), and Ghemawat (2007), all of whom provide evidence that cross-country corporate strategy is fundamentally regional and not global.

There were slightly more men (52.7%) than women (47.3%). Thirty-five percent of the sample reported having some college, while 32.1% of respondents had completed college; 30.7% had completed a master's degree while a small percentage (2.2%) had completed a doctorate. Respondents' age was distributed as follows: (1) 38.9% was between 19 and 23 years, (2) 36.7% was between 24 and 30 years, and (3) 24.4% was between 31 and 57 years. The mean age was 28 years.

Global Brand Importance

The overall importance of buying a global brand is found in Table 2.

TABLE 2 Overall Importance of Buying a Global Brand: Aggregate Totals

	N	Percent
1 = Very unimportant	644	11.8%
2	452	8.3%
3	438	8.0%
4	717	13.1%
5	682	12.5%
6	892	16.3%
7 = Very important	1642	30.0%
Total	5467	100%

Table 2 indicates that when all responses across all 22 product categories were totaled, 46.3% of respondents rated a global brand as either a 6 or 7 (very important). Table 3 disaggregates these numbers by presenting mean scores for all 22 product categories in rank order.

TABLE 3 Importance of Buying a Global Brand: Ranked Order of Importance

Product	Mean	N
Mobile phone	6.0	258
TV	5.7	262
Home computer	5.7	255
Credit card	5.6	239
Refrigerator	5.4	240
Checking account	5.2	247
Dvd player	5.1	249
Washing machine	5.1	239
Running shoes	5.0	255
Motorcycle	4.9	185
Jeans	4.8	253
Shampoo	4.7	258
Coffee	4.6	232
Toothpaste	4.6	261
Clothes dryer	4.6	261
Soft drinks	4.3	251
Bottled water	4.2	253
VHS	4.0	184
Chocolate	3.8	240
Disposable batteries	3.8	242
Yogurt	3.8	244
Hamburger—fast food	3.7	227
Note. Rated on a 7-point scale with 1 = very unimportant and 7 = very important. Means are rounded to the nearest tenth.

The first 10 products in Table 3 (mobile phones through motorcycles), indicate that these products are all high risk, are all high involvement and, except for a checking account and running shoes, are all technological—in the broad sense of the word. A credit card is technological because it embodies the technology part of banking and purchasing. The high risk, high involvement nature of these 10 products places increased consumer emphasis on product quality, reliability, and dependability. In each case, the consequence of product failure can be significant. We consider a checking account to be high risk because errors in reporting or the inability to access accounts on-demand can result in serious negative consequence for the consumer (e.g., overdrawn accounts, reduced credit scores, account surcharges, etc.).

We also note the preponderance of durable goods (TVs, washing machines, refrigerators, home computers) in the list of products for which buying a global brand was most important. As noted, almost 58% of our sample resided outside the United States and all these respondents were from countries with emerging or transitional economies. We hypothesize that in these countries, a durable good's purchase is a risky purchase since it accounts for a larger percentage of total household or total personal budgets than in fully developed economies. Adding to the risk level of these products is the lack of enforceable warranties and guarantees in many of the respondents' home countries (e.g., India, Nepal, and Bulgaria). Buying global brands serves to reassure buyers due to the brand's perceived dependability and reliability, in other words, they trust a global brand.

Table 3 also suggests that purchase of a global brand is not very important for low involvement products, such as fast food hamburgers, chocolate candy bars, yogurt and disposable batteries. We suggest, then, a relationship between risk and the importance of buying a global brand. The greater the perceived risk, the more important it is to buy a global brand, and vice versa. A statement often made about a global brand is that it is a surrogate for quality (Keller, 2008). The rankings in Table 3 confirm this.

Clearly, all product categories are not equal relative to the importance of purchasing a global brand. Table 4 presents statistically significant gender differences for the importance of purchasing a global brand. Buying a global brand is much more important for women than men when purchasing a computer, refrigerator, a washing machine, shampoo, coffee, bottled water, a fast food hamburger, and yogurt. Gender roles and patriarchy in countries like India and Nepal can help explain why women more than men would prefer purchasing a globally branded washing machine and refrigerator. In these two product categories, women will have more knowledge about both local and global brands then men. More traditional shopping and family roles in countries outside the United States might likewise explain why women more than men would prefer a global brand of coffee, bottled water, hamburgers, and yogurt. With personal grooming products, like shampoo and toothpaste, women may be able to more clearly discern the differences between global and domestic brands than men. Lastly, the importance of buying a computer that is a global brand is again greater for women than it is for men. We hypothesize that buying a global brand reduces the functional, financial, and psychological risks associated with computers.

TABLE 4 Importance of Buying a Global Brand By Gender

Product	Male (means)	Female (means)
Computer	5.4	6.0
Refrigerator	5.2	5.6
Washing machine	4.9	5.4
Shampoo	4.3	5.2
Coffee	4.2	5.0
Bottled water	3.8	4.7
Hamburger—fast food	3.4	4.2
Yogurt	3.4	4.2
Note. Rated on a 7-point scale with 1 = very unimportant and 7 = very important. All reported mean differences are significant at ≤ .05. Means rounded to the nearest tenth.

Trusted Countries and Product Category

Table 5 summarizes part 2 of the survey, which asked respondents to choose the one country that their most trusted brand(s) came from. Table 5 lists the top three countries for brand trust for the 22 product categories. Brands associated with the United States were most trusted (column 1) in 15 categories, while brands from Japan were most trusted (column 1) in six categories. These results, we believe, can be explained not only by the larger proportion of respondents from the United States but also by the intense and highly visible brand campaigns developed for American consumers.

TABLE 5 Product Categories and Country Most Trusted

Product Category	Most Trusted	Second Most Trusted	Third Most Trusted
Computer (n = 235)	U.S. (47.7%)	Japan (38.7%)	Other country (4.3%)
Toothpaste (n = 220)	U.S. (50.0%)	India (22.7%)	Germany (10.5%)
Bottled water (n = 218)	U.S. (45.4%)	Other country (33.7%)	France (8.3%)
DVD player (n = 234)	Japan (71.4%)	China (8.5%)	U.S. (8.5%)
Washing machine (n = 218)	Japan (34.9%)	U.S. (28.4%)	Germany (19.3%)
Jeans (n = 221)	U.S. (61.1%)	Other country (14.0%)	China (6.3%)
Running shoes (n = 227)	U.S. (52.9%)	China (16.1%)	Germany (10.1%)
TV (n = 239)	Japan (67.4%)	U.S. (13.0%)	China (5.9%)
Motorcycle (n = 165)	Japan (45.5%)	India (19.4%)	U.S. (17.0%)
Chocolate bar (n = 212)	U.S. (38.2%)	Other country (21.2%)	Germany (15.1%)
Yogurt (n = 194)	U.S. (39.2%)	Other country (36.1%)	India (9.8%)
Checking account (n = 219)	U.S. (61.6%)	Other country (17.8%)	GB (6.4%)
VHS player (n = 164)	Japan (58.0%)	U.S. (16.0%)	China (11.2%)
Clothes dryer (n = 173)	U.S. (37.6%)	Japan (20.8%)	Germany (15.0%)
Shampoo (n = 221)	U.S. (45.7%)	India (14.9%)	France (13.6%)
Refrigerator (n = 218)	U.S. (36.7%)	Japan (27.1%)	Germany (15.1%)
Credit card (n = 204)	U.S. (70.1%)	Other country (15.7%)	GB (4.4%)
Disposable batteries (n = 182)	U.S. (33.0%)	Japan (30.8%)	Other country (9.3%)
Soft drinks (n = 203)	U.S. (63.5%)	Other country (17.7%)	India (10.8%)
Cell phone (n = 237)	Japan (38.4%)	U.S. (23.2%)	Other country (17.7%)
Hamburger (n = 192)	U.S. (71.9%)	Other country (16.1%)	India (4.7%)
Coffee (n = 191)	Other country (37.7%)	U.S. (28.8%)	India (14.7%)

For the next analysis, we reduced the number of respondent home countries to wider geographic regions to increase the robustness of the test. The United States had 92 respondents, Eastern Europe consisted of Bulgaria, Serbia, Poland, and the Czech Republic (n = 73), and South Asia consisted of India and Nepal (n = 96).

Table 6 provided some unexpected evidence concerning the notion of global brands and trust. It appears that respondents trusted brands which they perceived to have a COO where they lived (micro level) or in the region where they lived (meso level). Thus a favored brand might be one that is trusted in some sense because of geography, thus making it feel more local or regional while still having a global brand flare. Almost all the product categories in Table 6 exhibit this characteristic. For the categories of home computers, DVD player, TV, yogurt, bottled drinking water, and jeans, no relationships were found.

TABLE 6 Most Trusted Region for Product Categories

	Region
Product Category	U.S.	Eastern Europe	South Asia
Toothpaste	More likely to trust U.S.	More likely to trust Germany	More likely trust to India
Bottled water	More likely to trust U.S.	More likely to trust Germany	More likely to trust India
Washing machine	More likely to trust U.S.	More likely to trust Germany	More likely to trust Japan
Running shoes	More likely to trust U.S.	More likely to trust Germany	More likely to trust India
Motorcycle	More likely to trust U.S.	More likely to trust Germany	More likely to trust India
Chocolate bars	More likely to trust U.S.	More likely to trust France	More likely to trust India
Checking account	More likely to trust U.S.	More likely to trust Germany	More likely to trust India
Clothes dryer	More likely to trust U.S.	More likely to trust Germany	More likely to trust India/Japan
Shampoo	More likely to trust U.S.	More likely to trust France/Germany	More likely to trust India
Refrigerator	More likely to trust U.S.	More likely to trust Germany	More likely to trust India
Credit card	More likely to trust U.S.	More likely to trust Germany	More likely to trust India
Disposable batteries	More likely to trust U.S.	More likely to trust Germany	More likely to trust India
Soft drinks	More likely to trust U.S.	–	More likely to trust India
Mobile phones	More likely to trust U.S.	More likely to trust Germany	More likely to trust India
Hamburger	More likely to trust U.S.	More likely to trust other country	More likely to trust India
Coffee	More likely to trust U.S.	More likely to trust Germany	More likely to trust India
Note. U.S. (n = 92). Eastern Europe consisted of Bulgaria, Serbia, Poland, and the Czech Republic (n = 73) while South Asia consisted of India and Nepal (n = 96). Chi squares were significant at ≤.05.

Table 7 provides a detailed look at brand trust by region and the countries from which the most trusted brand names came. For the categories listed in the table, respondents were asked to provide specific “brand names you trust most.” Those brand names were then coded by COO and crossed by region of the respondent.

TABLE 7 Results of Trusted Country Brand by Region

Product Category	Regions (U.S., Eastern Europe, South Asia)
Bottled water	• U.S. was more likely to trust U.S. brands • South Asians were more likely to trust Indian brands
Washing machine	• U.S. was more likely to trust U.S. brands • Eastern Europeans were more likely to trust German brands • South Asians were more likely to trust Korean brands
Jeans	• U.S. was more likely to trust U.S. brands • South Asians were more likely to trust British brands
Running shoes	• U.S was more likely to trust U.S. brands • South Asians were more likely to trust German brands
Motorcycle	• U.S. was more likely to trust U.S. brands • South Asians were more likely to trust Japanese brands
Chocolate bar	• U.S. was more likely to trust U.S. brands • Eastern Europeans were more likely to trust British brands • South Asians were more likely to trust British brands
Clothes dryer	• U.S. was more likely to trust U.S. brands • Eastern Europeans were more likely to trust German brands • South Asians were more likely to trust Indian brands
Refrigerators	• U.S. was more likely to trust U.S. brands • Eastern Europeans were more likely to trust German brands • South Asians were more likely to trust Korean brands
Disposal batteries	• U.S. was more likely to trust U.S. brands • Eastern Europeans were more likely to trust Japanese brands • South Asians were more likely to trust Japanese brands
Cell phone	• U.S. was more likely to trust U.S. brands • South Asians were more likely to trust Japanese brands
Coffee	• U.S. was more likely to trust U.S. brands • Eastern Europeans were more likely to trust German brands • South Asians were more likely to trust Indian brands
Note. Chi squares are significant at ≤.05.

Overall, the local/regional preferences presented in Table 6 were supported by Table 7. For U.S. respondents, the most trusted brand names for bottled water, washing machines, jeans, running shoes, motorcycles, chocolate bars, clothes dryers, refrigerators, disposable batteries, cell phones, and coffee were U.S. brand names. Eastern Europeans trusted German brand names of washing machines, clothes dryers, refrigerators, and coffee. South Asians trusted brand names from India in the categories of bottled water, clothes dryers, and coffee. In addition, South Asians trusted Asian regional brands for washing machines (Korean), motorcycles (Japanese), refrigerators (Korean), disposal batteries (Japanese), and cell phones (Japanese). There were some anomalies from the patterns mentioned above. Eastern Europeans trusted brand names from Britain for chocolate bars and Korean brands for refrigerators. South Asians trusted brand names from Britain for jeans and chocolate bars.

There were several categories for which no relationships were found: computers, toothpaste, DVDs, TVs, yogurt, checking accounts, VHS players, shampoo, credit cards, soft drinks, and hamburgers. Taken together, Tables 6 and 7 extend a main research finding about COO and consumer ethnocentrism into the brand trust arena: that “a universal domestic preference is a fallacy” (Heslop & Papadopoulos, 1993, p. 45). Table 7 indicates consumers have brand trust preferences from many COOs but those preferences are generally tightly bound by region (Table 6). Our findings also support Etzel and Walker's (1974) conclusion that COO effects are specific to product categories.

DISCUSSION

Overall, our research into the importance of global brands (Table 2) and brand trust confirms that brands perceived as global function as quality surrogates for consumers. Across a wide variety of categories, trust in a perceived-to-be global brand helped reduce the uncertainty and risk associated with high involvement products, many of which were durable goods.

The purchase of a perceived global brand may not be very important for low involvement products, such as fast food hamburgers, chocolate candy bars, yogurt, and disposable batteries. Since many of these are food categories, our finding supports Ahmed et al.'s (2004) conclusion that “consumers' purchase decisions are influenced more by the brand than by the COO of a food product” (p. 114). We suggest, then, a relationship between risk and the importance of buying a global brand. The greater the perceived risk, the more important it is to buy a brand perceived as global and vice versa.

Brands associated with the United States were most trusted. In almost 70% of the categories used in the research had the United States mentioned as the most trusted country while brands from Japan were mentioned in 27% of the categories. Our findings are consistent with latest Interbrand Best Global Brand Report of 2007 which had 70% of their top 20 global brands as U.S. brands. These results may be explained by the intense and highly visible global integrated marketing communications (IMC) campaigns from U.S. marketers and their international partners.

COO did not operate as an independent factor. It co-varied with the notion of trust. When COO was combined with the notion of brand trust, it was clear that they were both dependent on the geographical region of the respondent. A perceived global brand that was from the consumers' home county or their region had a decided preference. The strong, regional preferences captured in Table 6 add something new to the literature about global branding and brand trust. Our findings suggest that both brand trust and COO may exist for consumers at a meso or regional level. Traditionally, researchers and practitioners have conceptualized the global brand at either a macro-level (everywhere, everything about the brand is the same) and at a micro-level (glocalization or the need for local adaptation). Perhaps there is now a meso level emerging in which regionalization becomes an important brand characteristic. This finding would, for the first time, confirm from a brand preference perspective the work done by Rugman (2005) and Ghemawat (2007) on the regionalization of corporate strategy.

Our research provides further empirical support for Kapferer's (2005) descriptive conceptualization of “the post-global brand.” Kapferer observed what brand managers were actually doing in the global marketplace and reached the conclusion that “it is becoming more and more common for companies to develop products for specific geographic regions…. Furthermore, it is at [the] regional level that the world's markets… are at their most permeable” (p. 321). Thus a global brand is much more complicated than simply the consistent use of the name, logo, trade dress, value proposition and positioning everywhere the product is marketed.

At the macro level, the essence of global brands—quality, reliability, higher status, greater esteem, and trust—remain important. But, as this research suggests, brand trust operates at both the meso and micro levels. One question that arises is whether the global brand trust quotient would be affected by the more typical local/regional adaptation strategies, such as repositioning or minor changes in IMC strategy?

To extend our research, we encourage further investigations into the relationship of COO and brand trust. Such investigations should move beyond the COOs presented here.

Finally, we note one of the most interesting aspects of this research: the accuracy of COO attributions. Combining Samiee, Shimp, and Sharma's (2005) findings with Steenkamp, Batra, and Alden's (2003) concepts of “perceived brand globalness,” perhaps there is a complementary concept of “perceived brand localness.” Glocalization strategies are attempts to do just that. If consumers believe a brand to be local, then perhaps it is. In turn, this brings us back to the Kapferer's question that began our article: How global are global brands? To date, there is still no definitive answer.