The effect of country of origin on consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) of Colombian consumers: An empirical investigation of Samsung vs. Huawei brands

Consumers pay attention to the Country of Origin (COO) of imported goods, and the COO image is claimed to have a considerable impact on how consumers are forming their relationship with a particular brand. Colombia is the third biggest market by the number of mobile users after Brazil and Mexico, and the 2nd, after Chile, in penetration rate in the Latin American region. This makes Columbia one of the most important markets with high growth potential in Latin America for global smartphone producers. Competition among global smartphone brands is fierce, and effective branding strategy is an important prerequisite in leveraging rapid growth of Columbian smartphone market and in gaining a competitive market position. The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of COO image on consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) formation process and to determine the extent of COO’s influence on the consumers’ brand loyalty for two global smartphone brands (Samsung from Korea and Huawei from China) in Columbia. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is applied for analysis of these two brands with survey data from Columbian consumer market. The findings show that the COO image plays a more important role for the PQ of Chinese products than those of Korea. This suggests that Colombian consumers may pay more attention to product quality of Chinese smartphone products and brands as compared to Korean ones.