| Abstract: | Whether companies are extending or defending international markets, decision makers often are advised to carefully consider their products' country-of-origin images for their marketing and sales activities. Although extensive research shows the dominant effect of country-of-origin images in consumer markets, some doubt arises when shifting to business markets. Here, image differences may weaken due to longstanding practices of market interaction between customers and suppliers, and the discriminatory power of country-of-origin image may fade. To shed light on this issue, the authors first propose the novel concept of the supplier-country-image (SCI). They develop a corresponding SCI measurement scale and empirically validate it. Their survey of 157 German and French purchasing agents from automotive and machinery manufacturers yields a database of 628 ratings for four supplier countries of origin: Germany, France, the United States, and Japan. The authors then use the scale to provide evidence that SCIs indeed vary when purchasing agents evaluate suppliers from different countries. These agents exhibit cross-national invariance in their SCI, such that the authors are able to use the German and French rater subsamples to create manifest SCI profiles for the four supplier countries of origin. |
