Products labeled as “made in domestic country”: the brand matters

The purpose of this paper is to better understand an increasingly widespread practice consisting, of a brand, in signaling the domestic origin of its products aimed at domestic consumers, that is, the “made in the domestic country” (MIDC) strategy. To this end, it is proposed to analyze the MIDC label as a cue interacting with the brand’s characteristics (brand equity and country of origin of the brand).

A between-subjects experiment is conducted among 293 French consumers on four different brands of pasta. The overall design is a 2 (with/without the MIDC label) × 2 (high/low brand equity) × 2 (domestic/foreign brand) mixed design.

The results show that intention to buy the product increases significantly with the presence of the MIDC label, but not so willing to pay. The positive effect on buying intention is greater when: the product has rather low brand equity, consumer ethnocentrism is high and/or consumers are strongly attached to their national identity.

The present research extends the literature on country-of-origin effects by taking into account the role of the brand equity of the product. However, the study focused on only one low-involvement product category (pasta) and one country (France).

This study shows that adding an MIDC label to the product is empirically justified.

While moderate or high scores on “patriotic” variables reinforce the positive impact of the MIDC label, low scores reverse the trend, that is, cause rejection.