You don’t buy clothes – you buy an identity. A correlation between fashion brand and country-of-origin

This paper is part of a bigger qualitative study about the perception of country-of-origin from consumers in different countries. The purpose of this paper is to identify and explore whether country-of-origin information influences customers’ perception towards the brand of clothing products. It has been suggested that in the fashion industry, design and trademarks represents intangible assets which become an invaluable competitive advantage (Završnik & Mumel, 2007). Brand names are powerful indicators in estimating a products quality such as prestige and durability (Dodds & Monroe, 1985; Keller, 2003; Render & O’Connor, 1976). International fashion retailers are typically positioned in international markets by virtue of the marketing effort and product offering, which contributes to their overall brand appeal (Moore, 1997; Wigley et al., 2005). The impact of this strategy is that many of the fashion brands are transformed into international, universal or worldwide brands. However, consumers also have better perceptions on clothes that have a brand name along with quality construction (Davis, 1985). As country-of-origin has been used by customers to predict a products’ quality and performance and to understand the rationality of their purchasing behaviour (Cai et al., 2004; Olins, 2003; Muchbalcher et al., 1999), it could be argued that country-of-origin may influence consumers’ evaluations on international branded fashion products. Therefore, because the majority of international fashion retailers such as Zara, Mango, Next, GAP and Arcadia Group have been outsourcing their products in the less industrialised countries (Gereffi & Memedovic, 2003), it is fundamental to investigate whether country-of-origin information influences consumers’ perception towards international clothing brands.