Does the country of origin (COO) of food products influence consumer evaluations? An empirical examination of ham and cheese

The present study attempts to assess the impact of the COO effect on the evaluation of specific food products by Greek consumers. This issue has been examined exhaustively in the international literature, albeit there are very few studies concerning food products. A particular effort is geared toward measuring consumers' ethnocentric tendency as antecedent to the appearance of the COO effect and examining the level at which the latter is activated (product or attribute-specific). In this respect, consumer attitude (dis)similarities toward product types are analysed with exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Data were collected though personal interviews with a sample of 274 respondents, which compared two food products of Greek origin (ham and yellow cheese) to their counterparts from Italy and the Netherlands. Results indicate that respondents exhibit a marginally ethnocentric tendency. Overall, a more thorough analysis justified only minor differences between the competing products at the attribute level, although the study reveals the existence of COO effect activated at the product-level.