Feature Underappreciated National Origin Products

Cheeses and perfumes from France have a special cachet, as do cutlery and timepieces from Switzerland. Your customers are more likely to find such country-of-origin associations attractive, which means you can set higher prices. However, it also means you’ll pay suppliers a premium for the items. An alternative is to feature in your store high-quality products with underappreciated national origins.
     Here are two examples identified by Harvard University researchers:

• Chocolates El Rey in Venezuela, which sells cacao to candy makers in Switzerland and Belgium, but has difficulty selling its own chocolates to connoisseurs internationally
• Winemaker Concha y Toro in Chile, whose Don Melchor cabernet has received ratings equal to French Bordeaux wines from Wine Spectator

     A chief advantage of stocking such products is that you’ll pay less. A chief disadvantage is that shoppers may not grant to these products the prestige deserved by their quality. The Harvard researchers suggest ways for manufacturers and suppliers to overcome this disadvantage. Here’s my version of that list, tuned to reflect the retailer’s perspective and infused with shopper psychology findings:

• Keep prices high enough. Research at Israel's INSEAD and at Stanford University confirms that when people buy products or services at what they consider to be deeply discounted prices, they tend to end up feeling that the benefits are less than if they'd paid full price. They love having gotten a discount, but they don't have as much love for the product or service. Consumer psychologists call this the price-quality link.
• Flaunt the country of origin. Alongside the underappreciated product, have items carrying a sterling reputation which come from the same country. We can introduce the impression of quality to the shopper's brain indirectly or subconsciously. Ideas introduced this way have a special power. Because the perceptions arrive subconsciously, the person is less likely to mobilize reasons not to buy.
• Downplay the country of origin. The Harvard researchers analyzed how Corona beer successfully accomplished this. Early on, Corona was nicknamed “Mexican lemonade,” and rumors circulated that workers urinated into the beer during the manufacturing process. Corona chose to position itself not so much as a Mexican beer as a beer of the beach.

     Marketing researchers point out it took decades for brands like Toyota and LG to shake off their country-of-origin disadvantages. This means the opportunities for reduced supplier prices to you are more than short-term.

Click below for more:
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