مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

 مجله تحقیقات بازاریابی – Journal of Business Research

Some consumers are now moving towards an authentic country perspective of ingredient branding. The concept of ingredient branding is arguably a powerful marketing strategy used by high quality branded exports and more recently luxury branded products in order to justify low country image perceptions as trade-offs for high quality raw materials or expert artisan techniques (Anholt, 2003; Kim, Shin, Cheng, Lennon, & Liu, 2015). Therefore, conducting research can be important for understanding how the effects of authenticity in ingredient branding, craftsmanship and ethical sustainability can become a more epigrammatic style of decision making involving COO cues.

The present study investigates the consumer’s need for ingredient authenticity and its influence on product judgment as well as consumer’s willingness to buy and recommend luxury branded products that are of multi-country affiliations. The study answers these issues using the following three key research objectives: (1) examining the concept of authenticity in ingredient branding; (2) modelling the antecedents and moderator of ingredient authenticity and relating that construct to product judgment and brand attachment; and (3) measuring the influence of ingredient authenticity on consumer’s willingness to buy and recommend luxury branded products.

This research adds to the literature on country of origin (COO) effects in several ways. First, by drawing upon congruency theories, attachment theory and the brand strength hypothesis, the research develops a theoretical framework with the relevant sociological and psychological theories to rationalise consumer’s behaviours, specifically showing how and why individual needs for authenticity in ingredient branding enhances product judgment, brand attachment as well as their impacts on willingness to buy and to recommend on luxury branded products (Perrouty, d’Hauteville, & Lockshin, 2006). Second, the research adds further understanding of how marketers can enhance brand attachment to a specific brand by manipulating the COO cues in relation to ingredient branding (Newman & Dhar, 2014). Third, past studies do not explicitly examine closely the relationship between ingredient branding and its corresponding COO image perceptions (Anholt, 2003; Kim et al., 2015). While past research on authenticity and COO has focused on certain antecedents relating to consumer personality traits and in other specific contexts, the model developed for this research examines consumer’s need for ingredient authenticity as three congruent factors in order to explain consumer’s product judgment, brand attachment and their buying intentions.