Measuring the Effects of Framing Country-Of-Origin Information: a Process Tracing Approach

One appeal to consumer nationalism is to communicate information about the use of American workers in manufacturing a particular product. Phased narrowing, a newty devetoped process tracing technique, was used to modet how the impact of this information, "framed" differentty across experimentât conditions, changes over successive decision stages in narrowing down the choice of an automobite. In the presence of other cues, the nationalistic cue had its greatest effect among consumers scoring h i ^ on a scate of nationatism and when framed as "% American workers employed" rather than "% non-American workers employed. " This framing effect increased in magnitude across successive decision stages. These results have implications for how and when country-of-origin information shoutd be provided. Country-of-origin information has traditionally been communicated to consumers as simply the nationality of the company manufacturing the product (Bilkey & Nes, 1982; Gaedeke, 1973; Han, 1988; Hong & Wyer, 1989; Obermltter & Spangenberg, 1989). With the advent of muttinationat or "hybrid" products, however, this simpte ctasslfication is at best incomptete. Products such as automobiles may have parts made and/or assembted in severat different locations. Recent research has thus turned to how people respond to other country-of-origin cues, one of which is the percentage of American workers emptoyed in manufacturing a product. It has been shown, for exampte, that consumers prefer companies emptoying a targer rather than a smatter percentage of American workers in manufacturing and assembting automobites (Levin & Jasper, 1996). It has atso been suggested that this particular cue may ptay its biggest rote in the earty phases of considering choice options while final choices may be more apt to be governed by price and quatity. In other words, it has t een suggested that the American consumer as a gesture to supporting the American worker may initiatty strive to consider companies that employ mostly American workers but will ultimately choose on the basis ofvalue (Levin, Jasper, Mittelstaedt, & Gaeth, 1993). Severat questions, of course, arise in investigating this issue: 1) What is the most effective way of communicating information aboutemptoymentof American workers? In thisstudy we compare two ways of "framing" this information: giving the "percentage of American workers" emptoyed in manufacturing a product or the ''percentage of non-American workers". 2) How is this information weighted at different stages of the decision process? tn this study we use a multi-attribute multi-stage decision task. 3) How do individuals differ in using this information? In this study we use an individual difference measure of consumer nationalism derived from Shimp and Sharma's(1987) ethnocentrism scale. The tast two questions were addressed with the aid of a new method that we catt "phased narrowing" (Levin & Jasper, 1995). This method is an extension of eariier methods designed to trace the process by which choice options are screened and narrowed down iKfore reaching a final decision (Beach & Potter, 1992; Bettman, 1979; Newell & Simon, 1972; Payne, 1976; Payne, Bettman, & Johnson, 1993). What's unique about phased narrowing is that it requires decision makers to use a series of discrete steps and, with the aid of special analytic toots, it is capable of examining changes in attribute importance across stages and of relating these changes to measurable individual differences. In our original study (Levin & Jasper, 1995), for exampte, subjects were given a muttiattribute-muttioption phased decision making task in which they began with 18 automobite options and were asked in successive stages to narrow them down to 6, then to 3, and finatty to 1. These successive stages roughly parallel what researchers studying the formation and use of consideration sets would tabetasthe transition from "awareness set" to "consideration set" to "choice set" to "final choice" (Nedungadi, 1990; Roberts & Lattin, 1991; Shocker, Ben-Akiva, Boceara, & Nedungadi, 1991). One of the attributes used to descrit« each of the 18 options was "% American workers employed. " The major finding was that the importance of this nationalistic cue decreased for most subjects as they approached a final decision. However, for those scoring highest on a scale of consumer nationatism, this tendency reversed. For these subjects, the attribute "% American workers" actuatty increased in importance as they approached a finat decision. The present study was designed to extend this research by investigating how the processes uncovered in the pretiminary study would be impacted by the manner In which the information about the percentage of American workers was presented. In fact, this will be the first study to evaluate whether information framing effects increase or decrease as one approaches a finat decision. Previous research using objectively equivalent product information labeled in different terms (e.g., 50% success rate vs. 50% failure rate of a medical treatment, or 80% lean vs. 20% fat ground beef) has shown that more favorableevaluations are produced with labels evoking positive associations than with latrels evoking negative associations(Christensen etat., 1991; DavisB Levin & Gaeth, 1988; Marteau, 1989; Wilson et al., 1990). In the present case, identifying a product as employing"50% American workers" should be more apt to call attention to the virtue of keeping Americans employed than identifying a product as employing "50% non-American workers". Therefore, we predict that employment information presented as "% American workers employed" should lead to more favorable product evaluations than equivatent information presented as"% non-American workers emptoyed". In addition, based on previous research and theory, we predict that the importance or weight of the emptoyment factor retative to other factors should be greater for those scoring high on a scate of consumer nationalism or ethnocentrism than for those scoring low and that changes In the importance of this factor over successive decision stages should be different for high and tow nationatism consumers; specificatty, onty high nationatism consumers should show an increasing emphasis on emptoying American workers as they approach a final choice. Because the issue has never been investigated before, interactions involving the framing variable and decision stage are an open question, as is the issue of whether the effect of information framing on initial impressions and associations is transient or persistent. 385 Advances in Consumer Research Volume 23,® 1996 386 / Measuring the Effects of Framing Country-of-Origin Information: A Process Tracing Approach FIGURE 1 Stimulus Design for Set of 18 Options