Investigating the Impact of Country of Origin on Customer Behavior:Investigation of the Moderating Roles of Product Involvement and Product Familiarity on Product Evaluation and Customer Behavioral Intentions

Researchers have demonstrated that COO image influences the consumer’s evaluation of products in general, specific classes of products, and specific brands. Since Schooler’s (1965) seminal article the effect of country-of-origin biases on consumer attitudes has been an issue of continuing interest. Over the past four decades the attention of researchers has continuously shifted as new challenges presented themselves. A key challenge is the investigation of potential variables that moderate the influence of COO. IN this article we study the effect of COO on consumer behavioral intentions and product evaluation. The emphasis of this study is to clarify how product familiarity and product involvement can moderate the importance that consumers place on COO image when they evaluate products for purchase or consumption. This research is a descriptive and correlation study based on a survey with applied objective. The statistic population is home appliances consumers in Qazvin. Data were gathered via a questionnaire from the sample size of 384. The study findings show that COO image has direct effect on product evaluation and consumer behavioral intentions. Moreover, study findings show that consumers consider COO image to be more important for their product evaluations when they evaluate products from more familiar product categories and are more involved with the products that they are evaluating. We hope these findings help internal and external companies’ managers to be aware of the factors that effect on product evaluation and help them to make better decisions.