Studying the country-of-origin cue in action: An experimental examination of wine evaluations in the United Kingdom and New Zealand

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of the country-of-origin cue on consumer evaluations of low value FMCG goods. A field experimental technique was used, in which the country-of-origin cue was manipulated via very high-quality mock-ups of a range of Chardonnay varietal wines that were presented to a group of New Zealand wine purchasers as real products. This experiment was replicated with a different varietal (Cabernet Sauvignon) and a different group of consumers (United Kingdom). The four country-of-origin cues (New Zealand, Australia, Chile and France) created significant profiles of evaluation in all three experiments. The profiles for the three experiments showed some individual differences, but they also displayed some striking overall similarities that indicated that the country-of-origin cues might have caused the recall of a common evaluation heuristic in this instance.