Product‐country fit in the Canadian context

Purpose – This paper aims to show that the congruency between the source of a product being evaluated and the commonly held perceptions of that product's association with a country of origin (COO) leads to a more positive evaluation of that product. Design/methodology/approach – This is an experimental study using two congruent product stimulus categories and two non‐congruent product categories, each associated with a Danish and a non‐Danish sounding brand name to elicit evaluation of product profiles from a sample of 187 young consumers. Findings – Among all the variables included in the analysis of variance (ANOVA) tables, product‐country congruency performed the best. The second strongest main effect is attributed to familiarity with Danish products. The brand‐country congruence variable related only indirectly to the evaluation of products from Denmark through an interaction with product‐country congruence. Research limitations/implications – Future research should seek to build data sets from a larger number of adult consumers from several countries with more product and brand stimuli associated with multiple countries. Practical implications – Consumers who are familiar with products made in Denmark should be the prime target market for products congruent with Denmark. Because of their strong association with Denmark, these products may benefit from their association with country of design (COD) Denmark in promotional programs. Originality/value – Using cognitive‐consistency theory, this paper extends the previous literature on the perceptions of product‐country‐fit by including the effects of brand‐country fit, technological complexity, three dimensional conception of COO, and two separate product evaluation measures, using product‐country familiarity, product involvement and product experience as moderators.