THE EFFECTS OF COUNTRY-OF-ORIGIN ON THE SERVICE SECTOR: A MULTIDIMENSIONAL APPROACH

ABSTRACT Purpose: This study aims to present an original framework to investigate how the country-of-origin influences the quality perception of a service by breaking down this construct in three sub-dimensions and further verifying their impact both, individually and collectively. Originality/Value: Despite the growing importance of the service sector, both the research in international services marketing and the studies on the Country-of-origin are very limited if compared with those performed on the manufacturing sector and, to our knowledge, none of them used this construct multidimensionally. The development of an original framework with three sub-dimensions: Country-of-Know-How (COK); Country-of-Personnel (COP); and, Country-of-Tangibles aims to fulfill these gaps. Design/methodology/approach: Our framework was empirically tested with four experiments and a survey. Data were gathered from 718 Brazilian students in three Universities located in two different states in Brazil. Findings: The results obtained indicate that COO can significantly affect consumers’ evaluation of perceived service quality and that this construct can be segmented since we have indeed verified clear effects of all sub-dimensions.