An Empirical Study on the Impact of Country of Origin Effect on Young Lithuanian Consumers' Attitude towards Products

The country-of-origin (COO) effect is one of the most controversial areas of scientific marketing research because the results of some studies lead to different conclusions about the COO and its impact on consumer attitude and behaviour. The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of COO effect on consumer's attitude to a product and how it depends on COO effect's moderators in the Lithuanian market. Theoretical analysis reveals that COO effect on consumer's attitude to a product depends on moderating effects of consumer experience and product knowledge, consumer ethnocentricity, consumer product involvement, consumer perceived product risk and a product brand. The quantitative research method - online questionnaire survey - was chosen as an appropriate method to collect research data. The correlation analysis was used to estimate the relationship of COO effect, its moderators and a consumer's attitude to a product. Further, the data have been analysed using a stepwise regression method in order to verify the hypotheses of our research. The findings showed that a consumer's attitude to a product is strongly influenced by COO effect. A consumer's attitude to a product is also influenced by COO effect moderators, which are product knowledge and product involvement. Analyzing the results of empirical research it can also be noticed that in this research case, when respondents evaluated their attitude to products made in foreign countries, one of COO effect moderators analyzed in theory, a consumer's ethnocentricity, did not have influence on a consumer's attitude to a product. The original contribution of this article is that it investigates the moderating effects of consumer ethnocentricity, product involvement, and product knowledge on the relationship between COO effect and consumer's attitude to a product in an emerging market.