Abstract

Research on the Product and Country Images (PCI) issue (also known as "country-of-origin", or "made-in"), began 30 years ago and has grown rapidly to become one of the most important fields in international marketing and business theory, with over 500 published studies to date. This substantial literature reflects the pervasive presence of origin cues in society and the economy, in public policy and business decision-making. While the body of work on (PCI) has made significant theoretical and practical contributions, numerous unresolved questions remain. Among them is whether the effects of the product-country image vary across subcultural groups within nations concerning products from various countries. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine if consumer attitudes towards foreign countries and their products vary among ethnic subcultural groups (English versus French-Canadians). The data analysis, using multivariate analysis of variance and factor analysis confirmed that subcultural differences between English and French Canadians do indeed exist in the evaluation of foreign countries and their products. Manova tests revealed that significant differences between the two subcultures were detected for eleven of the eighteen countries under investigation. Furthermore, a subcultural bias was demonstrated by the fact that English Canadians gave more favorable scores to products from Great Britain than French Canadians did while French Canadians gave better scores to products from France.