Chapter 5 Discussion and Conclusion
5.3 Limitations and Future Directions
Several limitations of this thesis need to be recognized and mentioned.
Cronbach’s Alpha of loyalty, need for authenticity and risk measurements is rather low.
Items used in the questionnaire should be chosen more wisely in order to improve measurement reliability.
In order to create brand and country combinations with an exact or very similar distance,
58
Z-score was used to compare the images of brands and countries, which is problematic as using Z-score assumes normal distribution.
One part that was originally included in the questionnaire did not bring any usable results and was therefore not included in the process of hypothesis testing. Due to discrepancies and participants not providing valid data, the part which needed participants to rate five items according to their importance when making a purchase decision was not considered further.
Results of H3 and H4 were quite surprising. While H3, which supposes an effect of need for authenticity on choice, with high need for authenticity consumers being more likely to choose the better country, could not be supported, H4, which tests whether low loyalty and high need for authenticity participants are more likely to choose the better brand, turned out to be significant. However, when taking a look at the Anova table, no significance can be detected for a loyalty and need for authenticity interaction. Even when gender is taken into account, Anova displays p > 0.1 for Loyalty*NFA*Gender, which makes the result of H4 difficult to explain. It is assumed, that there exist more variables that influence consumer choice between country and brand, than what I was able to cover in this thesis.
Against the common belief that consumers who are loyal to a brand keep buying their brand regardless of where the product is produced, this thesis finds, that brand loyalty has no influence on choice between a favorable country of origin versus a favorable brand. Rather does the consumer’s choice depend on gender and risk. It would be important to reproduce this finding with data, that does not only measure consumers overall brand loyalty, but considers consumers’ loyalty towards the brands actually included in the multiple choice questions. It may be possible that although a consumer in general is very brand loyal, but coincidentally he or she is not a fan of the brand mentioned in the question and therefore goes for the better country.
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There exists a general limitation when questionnaires are used for investigating product choice. Choices that people make on a sheet of paper do not necessarily equal the choices these people make in a real purchase situation. A similar thesis with real sales data would be a highly interesting research.
Sample size is a limitation of this thesis. Because the group size of some conditions is quite small, it would be interesting to know, if the effect might turn out to be significant if there were more participants.
As only Taiwanese participants were considered in this thesis, an international study including different nationalities would be an interesting approach to find out whether the relationship of loyalty, need for authenticity, risk and gender with choice between favorable brands versus favorable countries of origin is the same in geographically and culturally different areas.
Eventually, it is recommended to consider more product categories for further research.
Only four product categories were used in this thesis, with the risk level of two being very similar, so that only one product could be used to represent either a low or high risk purchase. It would be important to expand the range of products, and with this the range of risk level, investigated, to see whether the findings of this thesis can be repeated on a greater scale.
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Appendix
Questionnaire Low Risk:
1) 假設您打算購買運動衣, 您會選擇購買哪一個? (假設您錢足夠) A. 於越南製造的愛迪達(Adidas)運動衣
B. 於韓國製造的 New Balance (NB)運動衣 C. 我不知道這兩個或之中一個品牌
2) 假設您打算購買運動衣,, 您會選擇購買哪一個? (假設您錢足夠) A. 於瑞典製造的愛迪達(Adidas)運動衣
B. 於美國製造的 Nike 運動衣 C. 我不知道這兩個或之中一個品牌
3) 假設您打算購買運動衣,, 您會選擇購買哪一個? (假設您錢足夠) A. 於義大利製造的 New Balance (NB)運動衣
B. 於泰國製造的 Nike 運動衣 C. 我不知道這兩個或之中一個品牌
4) 假設您打算購買煮水壺, 您會選擇購買哪一個? (假設您錢足夠) A. 於英國製造的海爾(Haier)煮水壺
B. 於孟加拉製造的飛利浦(Philips)煮水壺 C. 我不知道這兩個或之中一個品牌
5) 假設您打算購買煮水壺,, 您會選擇購買哪一個? (假設您錢足夠) A. 於台灣製造的歌林(Kolin)煮水壺
B. 於越南製造的西門子(Siemens)煮水壺 C. 我不知道這兩個或之中一個品牌
6) 假設您打算購買煮水壺, 您會選擇購買哪一個? (假設您錢足夠) A. 於瑞典製造東元(Teco)煮水壺
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18) 如果購買…時選錯的話，會有嚴重的負面結果。
1 非常同意 2 有點同意 3 普通 4 有點不同意 5 非常不同意
以下兩題的說明: 資訊對於選擇的重要性. 請給分. 總共有 100 分可以用. (例子:
您租房子最在意的是什麼? 月租高低 50 分, 地點與環境 20 分, 房子大小 30 分, 可否養寵物 0 分)
19) 購買運動衣時我最在意: (請給分, 最多可用 100 分)
品牌 生產國家 價錢 顏色 服務態度
20) 購買煮水壺時我最在意: (請給分, 最多可用 100 分)
品牌 生產國家 價錢 顏色 服務態度
Demographics:
性別: 男 女
年齡: 20 歲以下 21-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 61 歲以上
學歷: 國中(含以下) 高中職 大專院校 碩士 博士
月收入: 10,000 元以下 10,001 – 30,000 元 30,001 – 50,000 元 50,001 – 80,000 元 80,001 元以上
職業: 學生, 金融/保險, 房地產, 教育/研究, 建築/營造, 資訊科技, 服務, 醫療/
保健, 法律相關行業, 觀光/旅遊, 行銷, 藝術, 家管, 待業中, 其他…
Questionnaire High Risk:
21) 假設您打算購買一台新車, 您會選擇購買哪一個? (假設您錢足夠) A. 於泰國製造的奧迪(Audi)汽車
B. 於美國製造的沃爾沃(Volvo)汽車 C. 我不知道這兩個或之中一個品牌
22) 假設您打算購買一台新車, 您會選擇購買哪一個? (假設您錢足夠)
70
71
72
品牌 生產國家 價錢 顏色 服務態度
Demographics:
性別: 男 女
年齡: 20 歲以下 21-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 61 歲以上
學歷: 國中(含以下) 高中職 大專院校 碩士 博士
月收入: 10,000 元以下 10,001 – 30,000 元 30,001 – 50,000 元 50,001 – 80,000 元 80,001 元以上
職業: 學生, 金融/保險, 房地產, 教育/研究, 建築/營造, 資訊科技, 服務, 醫療/
保健, 法律相關行業, 觀光/旅遊, 行銷, 藝術, 家管, 待業中, 其他…