To tell or not to tell

Abstract

With increasing globalization, more organizations are operating outside their home country, and even organizations that do not expand globally often compete with foreign organizations that have entered their home turf. In this global environment, the country of origin (COO) of organizations has become a cue in how they are evaluated by publics. While the disciplines of marketing and advertising have long researched the impact of COO on consumer choices, public relations scholars are only beginning to develop an interest in the topic. Using the example of American and foreign car manufacturers, three studies were conducted to explore the importance of COO for PR strategy and relationship building. The main theories under analysis were the country-of-origin effect and organization-public relationship theory, but also research on representation and interactivity was taken into account. A textual analysis of the U.S. websites of car brands found few mentions of the respective home countries and strong appeals to American patriotism employed by foreign manufacturers. In-depth interviews with 11 high-ranking PR practitioners of 19 brands revealed a lack of clearly defined strategy for the communication of heritage, potentially due to different conceptualizations of origin. A pre-test-post-test experiment (N = 489, with control group) showed that consumers preferred appeals to American patriotism from foreign brands, but not from domestic brands. Appeals had a stronger impact on the COO effect than on organization-public relationships (OPR). However, a relationship between COO and OPR was found that warrants further investigation. All studies confirmed that COO is a highly relevant topic for public relations. Practitioners need to actively engage in COO communication and scholars will find many opportunities for future research. Integrating COO research will be one way to make PR theory more international and applicable to today’s global business environment.