A Review of the Cognitive and Affective Country-of-Origin’s Effects and Their Influence on an Organisational Attribution of Blame Post a Crisis Event: An Abstract

Abstract

Organisations have attempted to transfer the image of their home countries to their product or services for decades (Arpan and Sun 2006). Recent research in international marketing has confirmed that brand’s country of origin (COO) can transmit various things to potential consumers, such as reliability, quality, prestige value and innovativeness. Such studies (referred to COO effects) highlight that, with the passage of time, consumers tend to form some impressions of countries and their products or services. These impressions become overall evaluations of country quality or image as they link to the key outputs of a given country. These overall evaluations can act as stereotypes or judgement invoked by consumers when intended to purchase a given product or services, primarily when consumers have a least knowledge about a given product or services (Maheswaran 1994). On the other hand, international brand-related crises (Volkswagen emission scandal, Malaysian airline crisis, United Airline crisis, Facebook data scandal, Samsung battery explosion crisis) have become more common, often threatening the image of the organisations behind them. The impact of COO effect in relation to crisis management context also remained significantly misinterpreted. In the past, researchers primarily focused on cognitive aspects of COO effects, while an affective aspect of COO has been largely ignored. Therefore, the present research provides an extensive review of the literature by highlighting the influence of both cognitive and affective COO effects on organisational trust, distrust, attribution of blame and consumer future purchase intention postcrisis event. A review of the literature confirms that trust and distrust in the organisations are not merely based on the cognitive aspects attached to their home country and its people but also based on the affective or emotional aspects. Moreover, in the past, distrust has been considered as an opposite end of a trust. Nevertheless, this research provides clear guidelines that these two are the separate and distinct constructs. The present study also seeks to advance our theoretical understanding of COO effects (both cognitive and affective) in a crisis management context, via decomposition of the COO construct into a country image (CI) and country people image (CPI) at both the cognitive and affective levels. Specifically, the research highlights the capacity of these four dimensions of COO to shape brand trust/distrust, attribution of blame and consumer purchase behaviour post a crisis event.