Abstract

In this thesis, we are interested in investigating whether cosmopolitan individuals have greater knowledge of brand origins as compared to non-cosmopolitans. We also looked at the possible moderating effect of need for cognition on the latter relationship. Additionally, we investigated whether the level of confidence in assigning a country of origin to a brand affects brand attitude. And finally, we decided to look at the different type of industries and see if those influence brand recognition accuracy. Our analysis shows that cosmopolitan individuals have significantly higher brand origin recognition accuracy scores than non-cosmopolitans. Secondly, we found an interaction effect between need for cognition and cosmopolitanism; which means that there is a moderating effect of need for cognition on our main relationship. Thirdly, we found that when individuals are less confident about the origin of a brand, brand attitude decreases and vice versa. Finally, we found that industry type does seem to influence brand origin knowledge. Indeed, the automobile industry has the highest brand origin recognition accuracy scores as compared to other industries such as electronics or apparel.