Mapping the meanings conveyed by Brand Provenance.
Abstract
This study suggests to interpret in a brand centred perspective the relation between the brand
provenance and the consequent consumer perceptions of brand meanings.
Applying the association network theory, we review the concept of Brand Origin using the term of
provenance, defined as a brand association dissimilar from the others thanks to its high potential of
meaningfulness. Supporting our proposal through the literature, we analyze the meaning structure of
provenance that we find composed by the same dimensions of that one of a brand.
Implications and future research proposals are presented.
D’ANTONE SIMONA
SAPIENZA UNIVERSITA’ DI ROMA (Italy)
Via del Castro Laurenziano 9 - 00161 - Roma
[email protected]
1
1. Introduction
It is widely recognized that nowadays consumers seek meaning in consumption as in other various
aspects of live (Fournier, 1998; Holt, 2003) and that for this reason the brand, adding meanings to
products, has a growing intangible value (Gardner and Levy, 1959; McCracken, 1989).
It is not surprising, then, that the brand represents one of the main sources of information in
purchase decisions, often being in itself the object of the consumer choice (e.g. see the extensive
literature about thee “brand choice”).
Disregarding this aspect, the Country of Origin literature have mainly focused on the influence that
the image of the Country association determines on consumer perceptions, attitudes and purchase
intention of a product (Obermiller, Spengerberg, 1989; Johansson, J. K., 1989; Pharr, 2005).
In most of these researches the brand has been treated as an extrinsic product attribute (Hui and
Lianxi, 2002; Ahmed et al., 2004; Lin and Kao, 2004) like the COO itself.
Notwithstanding, as stated from Usunier (2002) and suggested by other authors (Thakor and Kohli,
1996; O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy, 2000; Phau and Prendergast, 2000; Kenny, L. and O. C.
Aron, 2001), the notion of origin it’s today more “a matter of brands and their content” (Usunier,
2002, p. 11). That means that it is possible to adopt a brand centred perspective in studying the
phenomenon, looking for the effects that the origin determines on the brand image perceptions.
Let’s think to a global brand like Zara, for instance: how does its brand image change if consumers
perceive it as an Italian or Spanish brand?
The theme, here, it is not the recognition of the “real” brand origin (Samiee, Shimp and Sharma,
2005; Liefeld, 2004; Madden, 2003), but the study of how the perceived origin (Thakor and Kohli,
1996), whatever it is, influences the overall image of the brand.
Without elaborate here on the process of the meaning transfer, we just want to lay the foundations
to understand the peculiar nature of this brand association that is probably the reason why COO
studies are still a fertile and fascinating research subject.
Illustrating the construct of “brand origin” referring to the consumer association network theory
(Anderson and Bower, 1979), we try to focus on the main traits that differentiate it form the other
brand associations.
In our conceptualization the brand origin is then meaningfulness, “reach” association that is able to
convey meanings and influence the process of “sense attribution” to products because of its relation
with the object that it represents and of its peculiar meaning structure.
Starting with a brief literary review and the theoretical foundations of our brand origin
conceptualization (after named “provenance”), the subsequent paragraphs in the article theoretically
exhibit the polysemy and the multifaceted meaning structure of this association that make it similar
to a brand. In the final paragraph we suggest some avenues for future researches and provide
directions to better communicate and use to advantage the brand origin information in brand
communication strategies.
2. From Brand Origin literature review to the concept of provenance
It is possible to distinguish two principal approaches to the study of COO effects on consumer’s
evaluations: the first and prevailing is the “product centred”; the second and narrow
(O’Shaughnessy e O’Shaughnessy, 2000; Ratliff, 1989; Thakor and Kohli, 1996) can be named
“brand centred”.
The principal evidences emerged by more than 50 years of COO studies have been mainly “product
centred”, that means that the antecedents (endogenous and exogenous to the consumer), the
cognitive, emotional and conative determinants, the individual and product moderators found all
refer to the effects that Country of Origin has on consumers’ product evaluation. (Pharr, 2005). Still
in the last decade’s research the “product’s Country of Origin” is dominant, defined as an “extrinsic
2
product cue or intangible product characteristic distinct from physical product characteristics or
intrinsic attributes. As such, a COO cue is similar to price, brand name, or retailer reputation in that
none of these directly bear on product performance and can be manipulated without changing the
physical product” (Pharr, 2005, p.37). As clearly expressed in these words, the brand in Country of
Origin research has had a peripheral role: it is just another moderating variable of the Country of
Origin effect (COEE) on product evaluation and purchase intention, sometimes represented by the
brand name in multiple-cue studies (Pecotich and Rosenthal, 2001; Hui and Lianxi, 2002; Ahmed
et. al., 2004), sometimes embodied by holistic brand constructs such as brand image, brand equity
or brand success.
However, we have counted around fifteen articles, published between 1994 and 2009, that study
COO focusing on the related brand management problems.
Some of these works measure how global brands evaluations vary when they are associated to
different places of production (Nebenzahl and Jaffe, 1996; Hui and Lianxi, 2003; Pecotich and
Ward, 2007). In these studies the main shift is from product to brand evaluation.
Drawing on this shift some authors have made-up the term Brand Origin, meaning that it is possible
not only to study the product origin but also the origin of brands.
There are two main concepts of Brand Origin: one refers to the actual origin of a brand, the place
where the headquarter of a company is settled (Johansson et al., 1985, p. 389). This definition have
given to researchers the opportunity of developing studies on “Brand Origin recognition”, that is the
ability of consumers of recognize the real origin of a brand (Zhuang et al., 2008; Balabanis and
Diamantopoulos, 2008), but still links the origin of the brand to something that is not intrinsic to it.
Another conceptualization, otherwise, attaches Brand Origin to subjective perceptions, defining it as
“the place, region or country to which the brand is perceived to belong to by its target consumers”
(Thakor and Kohli, 1996, p.27).
This interpretation has two main consequences:
a) Brand Origin is not linked to a single extrinsic cue like the place where the manufacture or the
headquarter is located, but the consumers can evoke the same origin referring to different cues. For
instance, the Swedish origin of IKEA can be associated to the colours of the brands or to the
naming of its products.
Some scholars have already investigated the sources that determine the brand origin perceptions on
consumers. The brand element that more immediately reminds to an origin, of course, is the brand
name itself (Leclerc et al., 1994; Papadopoulos and Helsop, 1993; Johansson, 1993). Other
antecedents of brand origin have been also identified in the location of ownership, the location of
manufacture, the location of assembly, the origin of top management, the marketing
communications and other inputs coming from travels or press reports (Thakor and Lavack, 2003).
b) Brand Origin, defined as relative to subjective perceptions, is by definition integrated within the
brand image.
Some authors have already conceptualized the Brand Origin as a part of brand image (Thakor and
Kohli,1996; Thakor and Lavack, 2003; Phau and Prendergast, 2000; Kenny and Aron, 2001;
Yamen, 2008). Notwithstanding, we claim that, at most, the variation of brand image depending on
different origins effect have been verified (Yamen, 2008) but not explicitly explained or studied in
its mechanism.
Tough drawing on the brand origin concept and shifting the point of view from the country (of
origin) to the brand (origin), we prefer, here, to refer to the concept and term of “provenance”.
Firstly, we refer to provenance as a concept in itself: we want to know and explore not the Country
image, but the related provenance concept that emerges from it; we don’t want to know the
America’s image (see COI literature), but the meaning of the Americanness for a brand.
Secondly, we prefer to use the term “provenance” because the place from which a product is
perceived to belong to it’s not always a “Country”, but it could be also a region or a city, for
instance, or an area not always coinciding with only a nation.
3
Finally, the term “origin” often refers also to an historical point in the timeline, the moment when
the product “was born”, in some cases related to the place where firstly the product is conceived and
realized to be successively produced and sold abroad. To avoid confusion between the temporal and
spatial acceptations of the term “origin” and to better refer to the concept that we want to
investigate, we choose to use the term “provenance”.
Already used in some works (Iversen and Hem, 2008) it seems better representing the question
“where is the brand from?” that underlies the concept of “Brand Origin” and we retain that it better
fits in the approach that we adopt in our work.
In order to better understand the meaning transfer process from the provenance to the brand in
future researches, we propose here to start conceptualizing the provenance in a brand management
perspective, drawing on the consumer associative network theory.
Our proposal is to consider the provenance as a reach brand association in consumers’ mind, with a
meaning structure similar to that of a brand. In the next paragraph we’ll be focus on the provenance
conceptualization as a brand association, subsequently supporting its meaningfulness with literature
references.
3. The provenance: an association in the brand network
Peter and Olson (2001) define the “consumer brand knowledge” as the cognitive representation of
the brand. More in detail Keller (2003, p. 596) speaks about consumer brand knowledge in terms of
“the personal meaning about a brand stored in consumer memory, that is, all descriptive and
evaluative brand-related information”.
Therefore, to pursue the aim of capturing the meanings that are stored in consumers’ minds, the
consumer’s brand memory stores has been conceptualised as a network of information (Anderson
and Bower, 1979; Keller, 1993) associated with the brand name in customer memory. The model
illustrates that knowledge is organized in our minds as a network, formed by nodes and links.
Nodes are the information elements linked each other through links that can vary in strength. Any
node linked to the network can be activated in retrieving an information or stocking up a new
element. The stronger the link between nodes the higher the probability of activate most of them
just retrieving one of them (Collins and Loftus, 1975; Bourne et al., 1986).
A brand, therefore, can be represented as a network where a node is the brand itself and the other
ones are the associations. (Aaker, 1991; Farquhar and Herr, 1993; Keller, 1993; Engel et al.,1995).
The associations, organised in memory around a shared meaning and representing what the brand
means for one or more consumers (Murphy and Douglas, 1985; Aaker, 1991; Keller, 1993) are
defined as “everything linked in memory to a brand” (Aaker, 1991, p.148): they can be more or less
abstract, they can have stronger or weaker connections to the other nodes, they can be relative to the
brand in an absolute sense or in a particular context.
According to Keller (2003) associations can vary broadly in forms: people, places, other brands and
things can be brand associations. For instance, the brand Valentino may evoke attributes such as
clothes, elegance or workmanship, linked to its products, as well as people (e.g. Rodolfo Valentino),
places (Italy) or occasions (e.g. a gala night, Rudolph Valentino Awards), competing or
complementing brands (e.g. a bag Hermes).
Because consumers’ perceptions and the relative associations held in their memory not exactly
mirror what companies say about themselves, they can be considered just as “reflections” of the
brand and so they are commonly addressed “brand image” in literature. (Keller, 1993).
Adopting this point of view we should think about provenance as another node in consumers’ mind.
If we can think about the provenance as an association then at least the main characteristics of
brand associations can be applied also to it: strength, favourability and uniqueness.
First of all there could be differences in the strength of the link between the brand and its
provenance. The strength of the link between nodes it’s defined as the probability of activate most
4
of them just retrieving one of them (Collins and Loftus, 1975; Bourne & al., 1986). The strength of
the relation between the brand and its provenance, determines the “transferability” of the meanings
connected to the latter (Keller, 1993).
The concept is extremely connected to that of centrality. The strong connection between the brand
and its provenance, indeed, might be due to the position of the geographical origin among the “core
brand values” and to the long exposition of consumers to marketing policies drawing on it.
Therefore, it is not a case if the strength itself has been used by scholars to distinguish between
central nodes and peripheral ones (Park et al., 1986; Krief, 1992; Kapferer, 1998; Michel, 1999;
Van Rekom et al., 2006).
A second point is the favourability of an association. Some brand associations can be evaluated by
consumers more favourably than others; therefore it is possible to rely on them to favours positive
attitudes to the related brand. Many studies (Lillis, C. M., Narayana, C. L, 1974; Nagashima, A.,
1977; Cattin, P. et al., 1982; Bilkey and Nes, 1982; Ettenson, R., 1993; Kaynak, E., Kucukemiroglu,
O., 2001; Au, A. K. M., Sha, Z. Q., 2003; Bandyopadhyay, S., Banerjee, B., 2003) have highlighted
that the favourability of an origin is linked to the extent of development of the relative area. In the
same way, other studies remarked that if a provenance is particularly favourable for consumers in a
product category many brands should try to evoke it even implicitly (Leclerc et al., 1994). It is the
case of brands as “Massimo Dutti” evoking through its brand sounding an Italian origin or the case
of “Mc Donald’s” positively considered in some developing countries because evoking the Western
culture (Van Rekom et al., 2006).
In addition, in marketing literature an association is defined as “unique” when it is not shared with
any other brand and it is exclusively linked to the brand assuming a decisive role in the market
competition. (Kundé, 2002). The provenance can contribute to the uniqueness of a brand especially
in an oligopoly, for the first national players in a product category or in the beginning of the product
life cycle (Kleppe, I.A., N.M. Iversen, and I.G. Stensaker, 2002; Niss, 1996; Lampert and Jaffe,
1998).
4. The meaningfulness of provenance: some explanations
Consistently with Keller’s position (2003) we support the idea that the transferability of meanings
form the provenance to the brand is helped from the “meaningfulness of the knowledge of the
entity”. Taken account of this, we then propose to analyze here this “meaningfulness” that
distinguish provenance from other brand associations with a weaker symbolic power (see the right
side of the Keller’s CBBE pyramid model). First of all we, our conceptual model suggests
explanations to the meaningfulness of the provenance:
a) it is an association that represents an object (a geographic area) with its own life and a potentially
endless history. Because of this, it can change its image in the course of the time and continuously
generate new meanings, representing a constant source of new significations for the brand.
b) The meanings that it generates are socially elaborated.
c) As it can be associated to many brands, there is a reciprocal relationship between the brand and
the provenance, so that also brands convey meanings to provenance (even if here we focus on the
transfer from provenance to brands).
These points represent the main sources of meanings for the provenance, the contexts where they
can be firstly generated (place, society and markets). Because places, societies and markets have
their own development independently from that of the brand to which they are associated, they can
be considered as the causes of the polysemy of this rich association.
Evidences emerged from literature on the Country of Origin, support that the provenance is
different in somehow, appearing changing and reach in its “meaning value”. Supporting our
proposition with literature references we propose below some main provenance meaning
dimensions.
5
Quality meanings
Firstly, most of the studies have demonstrated how the place of provenance can determine different
quality perceptions in consumers. With regard to this some authors have stated that when it is not
possible objectively distinguish products on their intrinsic quality, consumers will use the COO as a
surrogate of quality (Cattin et al. 1982; Erickson et al. 1984; Terpstra and Han, 1988). Analogously,
also Johansson (1989) and Han (1989) refer to the signalling role of COO when speaking,
respectively, of “summary cue” and “halo effect”. The phenomenon can involve different product
categories (Elliot G. R. e Cameron R.C., 1994) and is often linked to the economic development of
the country, as that more developed countries often are associated with higher levels of quality.
Different aspects of the COO construct have been revealed to influence the perceived quality:
Hamzaoui and Merunka (2006) have found that country of manufacture has a stronger influence
than country of design in determining the consumer perception of quality. Similarly, according to
Chao (1998) “the consumer may exhibit different levels of tolerance for the amounts of parts used
in assembly that are sourced from different parts of the world, which in turn, may affect his/her
product quality and design quality perceptions”. This latter position is also similar to that of Li and
Leung (1993) that highlight the influence of COO on the “intrinsic quality” that, differently from
the overall quality, regards the quality of the each single product attribute.
Personality meanings
The term “personality meanings” refers to the personality traits that consumers can recognize in
brands and use to build relations with them and express themselves (Aaker, 1997). In a seminal
study J. Aaker identifies the main dimensions of this construct as sincerity, excitement, competence,
sophistication and ruggedness. Two different fields of study have focused on the relationship
between COO and personality meanings. First of all the “place branding” literature has frequently
proposed the construct of the personality to explain the different positioning and characters that
distinguish cities or countries (Bartikowski B. et al., 2009; Aiken and Campbell, 2009; Hosany S. et
al., 2006, D’Astous A. and Boujbel L., 1997).
Other studies differently show how the COO can have to do with personality meanings, moderating
the effect of brand personality on purchase intention (Xuehua, W. and Y. Zhilin, 2008) or being
conceptualized as a part of the brand personality itself (Thakor, M. V. and C. S. Kohli, 1996). These
researches confirm, then, that the provenance can carries and influence brand personality meanings.
Values meanings
Sometimes brands can use their responsible and ethic image to favour positive attitudes towards
them. The origin of products often influence the credibility of these values perceptions. In this sense
the developed-undeveloped country associations, mainly studied for their effects on quality
perceptions, can also influence the conscientious image of the brand. Similar effects on brand
values perceptions can be related to the “animosity” that is “the antipathy related to previous or
ongoing military, political, or economic events” that motives consumers to avoid the purchase of
the brand (Amine, Chao and Arnold, 2005, p. 90). Slightly different, also the boycotting (Klein,
Smith, and John 2004), when motivated by country associations, can be another example of how
the provenance of the brand bestow on it values meanings.
Thus, the choice of associating a provenance to a brand implies not only to refer to the congruence
of product attributes to the provenance (Roth and Romeo, 1992; Pisharodi, R. M., Parameswaran
R., 1992), but it also requires to refer to a “values consistency”.
Some authors already suggest this idea. Aren’t they reasoning on value dimensions when asking
about the existence of the country of origin of luxury (Dubois, B., Paternault C., 1997) or about the
ideal country to support green responsibility policies (Manrai, L. A., Manrai A. K., et al., 1997)?
Although some researches are already going in this direction (Balabanis, G., Mueller R., et al.,
6
2002), trying to describe country images trough human values, the field it’s still quite unexplored
and opened to further deepening.
National and familiar traditions
A particular subgroup of values is strongly linked to the traditions and culture of the geographic
area. Kapferer J.N. (2004), places the culture among the six brand identity dimensions, referring to
the brand values that are influenced by the geographic origin.
Phau and Prendergast (2000), conceptualizing the country of origin of brand, speak of it as a
“cultural and ethnicity signifier that should not change with a change in manufacturing location”.
Kenny, L. and O. C. Aron, 2001), similarly, propose the concept of Culture of Brand Origin
(COBO) referring to the cultural origin or heritage of a brand. The author state that the Western or
Eastern origin of clothes brands, for instance, is better known and recognized by consumers than the
country of origin.
In this regard, other authors have noticed that firms and consumers link brands to ethnic and
national traditions (Askegaard, Arnould, & Kjeldgaard, 2005; Hirschman, 1982; Penaloza, 1994).
The attachment to these brand meanings and the willing to identify with one’s culture, is at the basis
of the consumer ethnocentrism which is defined as “people viewing their own in-group as central,
as possessing proper standards of behaviour, and as offering protection against apparent threats
from out-groups” (Brislin, 1993). Also in COO mainstream of research some authors have referred
to the ethnocentrism revealing that ethnocentric consumers are more inclined to judge negatively
foreign products and less inclined to buy imported products (Shimp e Sharma, 1987; Sharma et al.,
1995; Balabanis and Diamantopoulos, 2004).
The four typologies of meanings reported (quality, personal identity, values and tradition) are
congruent with those founded in the meaning structure of a brand by Strizhakova et al. (2008) who
provide a scale to assess branded product meanings.
Then, we might state that:
- The meaning structure of the brand provenance is similar to the brand meaning structure.
This doesn’t mean that the brand image is always influenced by all these provenance meanings;
different brands that share the same provenance could evoke dissimilar aspects related to the same
origin. For instance, the American origin of Nike and Harley Davidson doesn’t probably evoke in
consumers’ mind the same types of associations.
Additionally, differences in meanings evoked and transferred by the brand provenance to the brand
might be related to differences in product categories. It is widely recognised in literature that the
country effect is product category specific to such an extent that two levels of country images have
been conceptualized, a country-level and a product-level one (Pappu et al., 2006). At the same time
the product category, drawing on a match-mismatch logic, seems also to influence the positive or
negative effect on brand image (Roth and Romeo, 1992).
These evidences have driven us to add a fifth dimension (Fig. 1) to the provenance meaning
structure, that is the set of products or categories most related to it. This is also consistent with the
fact that the provenance itself is influenced by the competitors that during the time operate and
belong to the same geographical area: their performances in markets can change, in the long run,
the provenance image and relative associations (Lampert and Jaffe, 1998).
7
5. Conclusions
The main proposal of this article is to consider the meaning structure of the brand provenance as
similar to that of a brand, composed by meanings of five different natures: quality, personality,
values, tradition and product.
The aim is essentially to provide a theory framework for future researches on meaning transfer
affecting the brand because of its geographical origin. Conceptualizing the provenance as a brand
association in the brand knowledge network, our contribution to the existing literature consists of
analyzing its complexity in terms of meaningfulness and mapping its meaning dimensions.
This perspective, consistently with emerging literature evidences, point out that also “soft” brand
associations (Biel, 1992) linked to personality, values and traditions can be influenced by the
provenance, traditionally recognized as affecting the quality and overall brand value.
Future researches might focus especially on these latter meaning dimensions, to explain how the
provenance can take part in consumption psychological processes like self or group identification in
brands or personal expression through brand ideals and values.
From a managerial point of view, reminding the possible effects of provenance on non product
related brand attributes can clarify that the perceived provenance can be considered as an
opportunity or a threat for the credibility and the effectiveness of brand communications and actions
involving values and beliefs. Above all symbolic brand positioning should take care of these
elements to sustain and enhance their brand equity.
Further studies might also analyze the mechanism of meaning transfer, an aspect not yet explored in
literature, to find the characteristics of the provenance associations that determine their involvement
in the transfer to brand.
Understanding some criterions of this process might be helpful to foresee how an international
brand can be differently perceived by consumers depending on its origin and to better communicate
and use to advantage the brand origin information in brand communication strategies.
8
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Appendix.
Fig. 1 – Meaning structure of the brand provenance
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