The study aimed to explore and describe consumers’ reliance on brands, specifically the
Country of Origin (COO) of brands as a heuristic, i.e. the perceived quality of a selected
category of interior merchandise and to subsequently explain how COO influences
consumers’ quality perceptions and product choices. The study focussed on major
household appliances, due to the prominence of brand names and the COO on these
products. In other interior merchandise product categories such as furniture and textile
products, the brand name and COO is not necessarily that prominent or visible. A survey
was conducted in the Tshwane metropolitan, which is a wealthy urban area in South Africa
and a key role player in the economic sector. The study was conducted in the context of an
emerging economy, where international brands have penetrated the market and made a
wider range of products and brands available to the consumer. The data was collected by
using convenience sampling methods supplemented by snowball sampling. It involved the
self-completion of a structured questionnaire by 450 willing respondents who fit the prerequisite
for the study, i.e. males and females, 25 years and older who belong to the middle
to upper socio-economic group (earn R5000 or more per month) and who have an education
level of grade 12 or higher, regardless of population group. Data analysis involved
descriptive statistics, as well as exploratory factor analysis, specifically Principal Axis
Factoring, using an Oblimin rotation with Kaiser Normalization to determine the underlying
factors associated with the quality indicated by brand names and the associations
consumers make of brand names and specific product characteristics. Calculations of
means, standard deviations, Cronbach’s Alpha, Anova, t-tests and post hoc Sheffe’s tests
were calculated where significant differences between demographics were investigated for
further interpretation.
The study concluded that consumers are relatively brand conscious, men more so than
women and that they are brand familiar in terms of various major household appliance
brands. Quality as the most important branded product meaning were confirmed, as well as
the use of brands as an indicator of performance and functional product attributes, i.e. value
for money. Brands are also frequently used, especially by females, as an indicator of the
product’s environmental and ethical compliances, but less so to infer its status implications.
The study did however confirm younger consumers use brand names to a greater extent to
infer social status than older consumers. It also revealed that the Black and other population
group use brand names as an indication of status characteristics significantly more than
White consumers. Consumers seem to have little knowledge of the COO of brands; they do however have strong stereotypes of Western and Eastern countries as well as South Africa,
where Western countries enjoy more positive stereotypes than the others. These stereotypes
also seem to strongly influence their overall quality perceptions of major household
appliances, especially in terms of durability, performance and prestige. The COO of a brand
can therefore have implications for its brand equity and should be addressed in brand
management and marketing initiatives. / Dissertation (MConsumer Science)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / tm2015 / Consumer Science / MConsumer Science / Unrestricted
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:up/oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/46275 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Gaum, Bernice |
| Contributors | Erasmus, Alet C. (Aletta Catharina) |
| Publisher | University of Pretoria |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Rights | © 2015 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. |
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