This thesis investigates the Jordanian consumers' perceptions of quality,
price and risk of foreign vs. domestic product. The main objectives of
this study are: (1) to identify the consumers perceptions of the quality,
price and risk of the domestic versus foreign product and to find out
whether consumers perceive the products of the various countries in the
same way, despite their origin, or do they discriminate between them
according to their source country?; (2) to find out whether the various
countries can be clustered together, in respect of the consumers'
perception of the quality, price and risk, according to their level of
development; (3) to explore the level of the relationship between the
three main cues: quality, price and risk for each country; (4) to profile
the consumers' perceptions of quality, price and risk of foreign and
domestic products according to their socio-demographic variables; (5) to
investigate the differences among the consumers in regard of their
attitudes towards such variables as the patriotic variables, business
practices .....as well as the relationship between such variables and the
consumers' attitudes (perceptions) of the domestic product quality, price
and risk on one hand and their socio-demographic variables on the other
hand; (6) to explore the differences between the consumers who attached
high importance on the origin of the product in evaluating the product
quality, price and risk and those who attached lower importance to the
product origin and (7) to find out what the Jordanian industry and
Jordanian Government can do in relation to the findings of this research.
The study employed both primary and secondary data. Primary data was
collected through a structured direct questionnaire from a stratified random sample of 1000 respondents. The municipalities records were used
as a sampling frame. Specific statistical techniques were used to achieve
the research objectives and to test the related hypotheses. The
chi-squared Kolornogrov-Smirnov, T-test, and F-test are used to investigate
the differences between the domestic product and the products of foreign
origins as well as the differences among the consumers according to their
socio-demographic variables. The Spearman Correlation Coefficient is
utilised to investigate the relationship between the consumers' attitudes
towards the domestic product and their perception of the quality, price
and risk. The profile analysis is employed to demonstrate graphically the
comparison between the domestic product and the products of the various
countries. The multivariate discriminous analysis is used to investigate
whether any of the socio-demographic variables could be strong enough to
discriminate among the consumers and to be used s a basis for segmenting
the consumers according to their demographic variables. The ANOVA
analysis is used to test the significance of the differences between the
domestic product quality, price and risk attributes and that of each of
the participating countries. The Cluster Analysis is utilised to
investigate the possibility of clustering the various countries according
to the consumer's perceptions of the quality, price and risk attributes of
their products. Finally factor analysis is used to group the 27 quality,
price and risk attributes into smaller groups to aid in a wider
understanding of the underlying dimensions of these variables. It is also
used to achieve the same purpose for the attitude variables. In applying
these techniques, the Sps computer package is utilised in all cases,
except in the profile analysis case, where the SAS package is utilised.
The thesis is organised into fourteen chapters: the first chapter
discussed the research problem, questions, objectives and hypothesis; chapter two introduced the relavant theory behind the present study; the
related literature is reviewed in chapter three; chapter four is devoted to
the development of the research framework; chapters five and six are
intended to explain the research design and the research methodology;
chapter seven is related to testing the validity and reliability of the
research and to introduce the characteristics of the study sample; chapters
eight through to thirteen are concerned with the research findings, and
finally chapter fourteen is the conclusion.
The countriesof origin used in the study are: U.S.A., U.K., Japan,
Russia, Romania, Taiwan, Egypt and Jordan. The product class employed in
the present study is the major household electrical and gas appliances.
Overall, the findings of the study support the following main
conclusions:
I. The country of origin appears to have a significant relationship with
the consumers' perception of the quality, price and risk of the product.
2. The economic development of the source country appears to have a
significant relationship with the consumers' perception of the
quality, price and risk of the products of these countries in that,
the countries with a relatively similar stage of development are
grouped together and the developed countries' products are perceived
to be higher in quality and price, but lower in risk than the products
of developing countries.
3. The home country bias appears to be more relevant in comparing the
domestic product to that of other countries in a relatively similar
stage of development. That is, the Jordanian product is perceived to
be higher in quality and price, but lower in risk than the developing
countries' product. It is also perceived to be lower in quality and
price but higher in risk than developed countries' products. A consistent negative relationship between quality and risk is found
for the products of the entire set of countries, in that the higher
the consumers' perception of the products of the various countries,
the lower their perception of the risk associated with these products.
However, in spite of the significant relationship between price and
quality, price and risk for most of the countries, the direction of
the relationship is not consistent as it is in the case of tiie quality
and risk.
5. It was found that only a relatively low percentage of the consumers
who agreed in connecting the purchase of the domestic product with the
patriotic duties. However, it appears that the higher the consumers
agreement with such variables, the better their perception of the
domestic product quality, price and risk.
6. Among the five socio-demographic variables, .sex was found to be the
lowest in discriminating among the consumers and age was found to be
the highest.
7. The weight given to the origin of the product in the decision process
was found to be of little importance in discriminating among the
consumers in regard of their perception of the quality, price and risk
of the products of the various countries.
The study suggests that it is to the benefit of the domestic producers
to develop separate marketing strategies for the imported products of
developed and developing countries, rather than dealing with the imported
product under the general term "foreign".