The Moderating Effects of Consumers’ Openness and Product Knowledge on the Relationship between Country of Origin and Product Judgment

• Main Authors: Joseph Chun-Yu Chou, 周俊余
• Other Authors: Chung-Chiang Hsiao
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/70726177080270598942

碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 科技管理研究所 === 94 === This study proposed a moderating model consisting of four constructs: a causal relationship between country of origin and product judgments with consumers’ openness and product knowledge served as moderators. Drawing from the notation of the brand alliance of IBM and Lenovo in 2004, the model was tested on the evaluation of Taiwan consumers’ attitudes. A tailored instrument, the CGTOPS, is formulated and validated to measure the consumers’ openness in the globalization of technology. The product knowledge is measured with an 11-item instrument. In the field survey, a factorial design of experiment is used to measure participants’ (N = 360) judgmental changes in response to the contingent information. Moderated multiple regression (MMR) and general linear methods are employed to analyze the interaction effects. This study serves as an attempt to empirically investigate how the outsourcing partners could pursue build own brand portfolio strategy by paradigm shifts. The findings support the proposed moderator framework. Consumers, who are identified with more product knowledge, tend to be less moderated by openness when making product judgments out of a specific country of origin. On the contrast, when the levels of consumers’ openness and product knowledge are lower, country of origin tends to play a more significantly role in the product evaluation. With the clarification of moderating effects proposed in this study, marketers may better predict the casual relationship between the corporate performance and consumers’ evaluation of brand alliance. As the diversified outsourcing of manufacturing sectors for technology products is strategically needed and the consumers’ knowledge on products is significantly different across segmental marketplaces, it is suggested that a strong brand portfolio can be designed and managed to exploit the consumers’ openness and product knowledge in the globalization of technology.