In the consumer behaviour and marketing literature over the last few decades, there are many research reports looking into country-of-origin effects on consumers’ perceptions of products and brands, and their willingness to buy. This research has examined concepts such as consumer cosmopolitanism, consumer ethnocentricity and consumer patriotism, and their effects on consumer behaviour. Some of the more recent research has attempted to take into account consumers’ recognition of brand origin, which is typically far from perfect. Marketing researchers refer to this as Brand Origin Recognition Accuracy (BORA).
You have been provided with an Excel file ‘BORA.XLS’. This contains results from a recent survey of UK residents, who were asked to identify the country of origin of 18 well-known brands. These included, for example, Tesco, Aldi, Dyson and Samsung. Nine of the brands were of UK origin, and nine of non-UK origin. The data in the file are for 150 respondents to the survey. There are figures for the number of UK brands correctly identified as being of UK origin, the number of non-UK brands correctly identified as being of non-UK origin, and the number of non-UK brands for which the specific country of origin was correctly identified. These latter three variables are labelled respectively as BORA UK, BORA nonUK and BORA Country. The file also contains values for a ‘consumer cosmopolitanism’ score (COSMO). This is derived from responses to a 5-item scale with items such as ‘I enjoy exchanging ideas with people from other cultures and countries’. The minimum possible score for COSMO is 0 and the maximum possible is 30. Respondent gender is also recorded.
You should prepare and submit a report that addresses the following aspects of the survey results:
1. Summarize and describe the distributions of the variables in the survey results: the BORA figures, the consumer cosmopolitanism scores and the respondent gender.
2. Examine whether there is evidence that, in the population from which the respondents were selected, there were differences in average BORA between men and women.
3. Examine whether there is evidence that, in the population from which the respondents were selected, the average BORA for the UK brands was different from that for the non- UK brands. Address this question separately for men and women.
4. Examine whether there is evidence of a relationship, in the population from which the respondents were selected, between ‘COSMO’ on the one hand, and ‘BORA UK’ and ‘BORA nonUK’ on the other hand?