Country-of-Origin and Wine Knowledge: An Empirical Study on Chinese Consumers’ Wine Evaluations

Abstract

This study examined the effect of Product-Country Image (PCI), a country-of-origin concept, on Chinese consumers’ attitudes towards local and foreign brands. It also examined the moderating effects of objective product knowledge (OPK) and subjective product knowledge (SPK) towards wine on the relationship between PCI and attitudes towards local and foreign brands. Adopting a three-country between-group factorial design and a field experiment in China, this study found that PCI had a significant positive effect on consumer attitudes towards both local and foreign brands, but the effect on foreign brands was country specific. OPK and SPK significantly attenuated the positive effect of PCI on brand attitude for local wines. However, the attenuating effect of OPK and SPK on foreign wines was also country specific.