Luxury: do customers prefer foreign brands over national ones?
Marie-Cécile Cervellon, Professor of Marketing at EDHEC Business School discusses in this article the link between the geographical origin of a brand and consumers.
Through our experimental research[1], we try to understand the link between the geographic origins of a brand and its consumers.
In the luxury sector in particular, much research has shown that the “made in” is a criterion in the decision to buy: for many client segments, it is important that the brand be manufactured in their own country. We look further, trying to understand whether customers who have a preference for national products are expressing a kind of ethnocentrism. Our sample is composed of French consumers of luxury goods.
Do the French tend to prefer French luxury brands over Italian ones?
Our results show that according to participants’ declarations, there is no significant difference between the love that the French have for French luxury goods and the love that Italians have for Italian luxury goods.
When response-time metrics are used, there is an implicit preference, often unconscious, for the brands of one’s country of origin.
The consequence is an unwillingness to accept criticisms of brands of our own national origins, while messages criticising a brand of another national origin are deemed credible. The findings of the study also suggest a reluctance to buy copies of items made by our own national luxury brands, as well as more negative feelings about national luxury brands that move their production offshore.
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