IMPACT OF COUNTRY OF ORIGIN ON BRAND LOVE: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF SELECT DENIM JEANS BRANDS

This research paper aims to analyze the impact of attitude towards country of origin on brand love for some select US and Indian denim jeans brands. Further the impact of brand love is also studied on loyalty and word of mouth. Survey based research using convenience sampling was used for data collection using self-administered questionnaires. The study has used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using AMOS 20 for data analysis. The empirical analysis shows that the attitude toward the country of origin does not impact the feelings of brand love. However, it was found that brand love impacts loyalty and word of mouth considerably. The findings have been derived from the sample of students from one university. Also, the study has not taken into account high-end fashion brands, thus limiting the generality of the findings to all brands. The findings provide a new dimension called brand love which both the foreign and domestic brands must give due credence to when framing of their branding strategies. By aiming to assess the relationship between the constructs of country of origin and brand love, for which sparsely few studies are found in the existing literature, this paper contributes to the growth of literature in the field of brand love.