Guest editorial
| Date | 19 November 2018 |
| Pages | 733-734 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-11-2018-005 |
| Published date | 19 November 2018 |
| Author | Nicolas Papadopoulos,Mark Cleveland,Boris Bartikowski |
Guest editorial
Introduction to the special issue
Beyond country and brand “Origin”: product/brand
place associations and the role of place image in
behaviour and strategy
The objective of this Special Issue (SI) was to “go beyond”
country and/or brand “origin”. As we noted in the Call for
Papers, the traditional “Country oforigin”(COO) construct
is old, tired, much debated and much mali gned, while both it
and its more recent cousin, “brand origin”,alongwiththe
growing interest in “place”studies intourism and other
cogent fields, show that geography may be e ven more relevant
today than ever before –globalisation notwithstanding. In
terms of going beyond “Country”origin, country isbut one of
several possible geographic loci, an dinterms of going beyond
“Brand”origin, brands can be administered from one place,
owned by a parent company headquartered in a different
place, designed in another, assembled in still another, from
components designed and sourcedin numerous locales,
promoted by a spokesperson associated with a particular
place, sold by retailers located in one or several places and
purchased by consumers living in ma ny places, some of whom
may have multiple ethnic origins or national ities –and named
in relation to an origin different from their own (e.g. the
Japanese-origin Subaru “Outback”or Cal ifornia’s“Gabbiano
Chianti Classico”wines). In a nut shell, what matters today is
the place with which a product or a brand is associated by its
marketer and in the eyes of its buye rs.
The authors who submitted manuscripts and the reviewers
who helped to select papers for inclusion understoodthe need
to “go beyond”well and made it possible to meet the SI’s
objective in spades. The magnitude of the task of developing
this issue, and the exhilarating fe eling we as Guest Editors had
as we saw the process unfold in theright direction, are best
reflected in the numbers involved: In total, 131 authors and
reviewers, located at 95 institutions in 32 countries and six
continents, engaged with us to bring about the collection of
papers that have been included. Accounting for the original
manuscripts and R&Rs this amounted t o 115 papers and 116
reviews, and since each of the three of us as Guest Editors
assessed each paper and each review carefully, on our part
these figures meant evaluating 345 paper and 348 review
iterations, or a total of 693 document assessments. Among
other things, this helps to better understand the work of
Editors-in-Chief who have to deal with hundreds of
submissions each year; we are grateful to JPBM’s co-editors,
Dr Cleopatra Veloutsou (who had primary responsibility for
this SI) and Dr Francisco Guzmán, for “being always there”
for us throughout.
The papers comprising this SI clearly get away from the
narrow conceptualizations of “COO”andrelated terms and
consider, instead, the bigger picture of product and brand
place associations (PBPA) and t he role that place image plays
in consumer behaviour and brand strategy. The issue begins
and ends with two papers that deal withbroad overviews of
the field. The first, by the Guest Editors and Attila Yaprak,
presents a holistic view of the PBPA area focussed on an
inventory of 32 place-related consumer dispositions toward
domestic and foreign goods. The last, by Andéhn and
L’Espoir DeCosta, closes the is sue with a detailed overview of
problems that characterise the COO res earch stream. The ten
papers in-between focus on a variety ofspecific place-related
subjects that take us “beyond”traditional foci in place
research.
In the first of these papers,the second of the SI, Bauer,
Johnson and Singh examine the role of consistency between
place and the place-related brand stereotyping, while the third,
by Kucharska, Flisikowski, and Confente reverses the usual
place-to-brand direction of associationby looking at the effects
of global brands on their countries of origin. The next three
papers move from the global to the subnational level: Sloan,
Aiken and Mikkelson look at the congruency between brands
and regions within the USA, Donner and Fort study place-
brand building fromthe stakeholder perspective inFrance, and
Martin and Capelli elaborate on terminal versus instrumental
values in the context of place brand communities, also in
France. Next, three papers study “places”in contexts where
traditional research does not go often: Aruan, Crouch and
Quester take us to the realm of services, Meshreki, Ennew
and Murad to industr ial buyers, and Schade, Piehler, Müll er
and Burmann to the role of city-level place images in
attracting skilled workers.Last but not least, in the subject-
specific studies, two papers deal with an issue of current and
growing importance, namely, cross-border mergers and
acquisitions,and their effects on place associations: Matarazzo,
Lanzilli and Resciniti focus on country image and corporate
reputation in cross-border acquisitions, and Johansson,Koch,
Varga and Zhaoonchange-of-ownershipeffects on the image of
premiumbrands.
Taken individually and together, the papers deal with a
wide scope of issues, were written byscholars representing a
variety of cultural and academic pe rspectives, and use a broad
range of methodological approaches, from conceptual to
empirical and from structural equation modelling and
econometrics to qualitative netnography. We cannot thank
our authors and reviewers enough an d we owe them a debt of
gratitude. We trust that their combined efforts will help to
spawn new place-related research that, along the lines of the
papers in this issue, goes “beyond”t he ordinary.
We thank our reviewers most prof oundly:
Zafar Ahmed, American University of Ras Al Khaimah,
UAE.
Thomas Aichner, Alfaisal Univer sity, Saudi Arabia.
Noel Albert, Kedge Business Sc hool, France.
Mikael Andéhn, Royal Holloway University of London,
UK.
Anahit Armenakyan, Nipissing Uni versity, Canada.
Søren Askegaard, Syddansk Univer sitet, Denmark.
Daniel Baack, University of De nver, USA.
Sally Baalbaki, Metropolitan State University of Denver,
USA.
Naval Bajpai, Indian Inst. of Information Technology &
Management, India.
Georgios Baltas, Athens University of Economics and
Business, Greece.
Journal of Product & Brand Management
27/7 (2018) 733–734
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/JPBM-11-2018-005]
733
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