Product Standardization and Attribute Saliency: A Three-Country Empirical Comparison

Abstract

Standardizing the marketing mix across different countries is limited by numerous factors. Focusing specifically on the scope for product standardization in the car industry, this paper empirically investigates the extent to which consumer preferences may act as barriers to standardization. Consumers from Korea, Spain and France—three countries at different stages of development and with distinct socio-cultural characteristics—are compared in terms of the importance they attach to various product attributes with particular emphasis on country-of-origin information and “green “ features. The results reveal a large number of significant differences between the three subsamples and illustrate the substantial barriers to standardization that can exist even for such relatively culture-free products as cars.