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With the proliferation of cross-border e-commerce (CBEC), consumers are now faced with a wide variety of products from the global market. The consuming process involves products and brands from different countries. country-of-origin (COO) image has become an important issue in this context (Papadopoulos & Heslop, 1993). COO image can be considered as an essential external cue, not directly related to the product, for consumers to evaluate the product (Votola & Unnava, 2006). Along with the manufacturing boom in China, Chinese products have now become attractive and expanded rapidly in the global market (Wang et al., 2012). Therefore, Chinese products are suitable and representative for us to develop a deep understanding of the impact of the COO image in this study (Lu & Xiong, 2004).
In an e-commerce setting, consumers can only view a listing of products at an online site, which will lead to uncertainty about the product evaluation (Ba & Pavlou, 2002). Compared with traditional exchanges, the feedback mechanisms of an online website will provide consumers with more additional information and reduce uncertainty. Based on the consumers’ unique needs, values, and interests, they will perceive a different level of personal relevance with the product. Therefore, a different personal involvement with the product will lead the consumers to different evaluation levels. Given the heterogeneity of consumers’ product involvement, an in-depth investigation into the relationship between COO image and product evaluation with different involvement is needed, especially in the Chinese market. (Insch & McBride, 2004; Liu & Du, 2019).
Previous research has focused on several factors that impact consumers’ product evaluation and purchase intention when engaging in international marketing, including product quality (Insch & McBride, 2004), price level (Baldauf et al., 2009), advertising effort (Buil et al., 2013), product-country image (Baldauf et al., 2009), social interactions and trust (Gefen & Heart, 2006; Mou et al., 2020). While there is much work on the antecedents of consumers’ product evaluation (Zhang, 1996), there is little research on the relationship between COO image and product evaluation, especially involving the in-depth investigation into the product involvement. Thus, this article intends to investigate the following research questions:
Research question 1 (RQ1):What factors influence consumers’ country-of-origin image of Chinese products in the context of cross-border e-commerce?
Research question 2 (RQ2):How do country-of-origin image cues impact consumers’ evaluation and purchase intention for Chinese products with different involvement types?