Влияние страны происхождения на восприятие имиджа бренда и намерение совершить покупку на примере корейских товаров на российском рынке средств по уходу за кожей

The modern world is moving towards globalization. It becomes easier and easier for us to consume the products from all around the globe. This also raises the level of rivalry; now producers have to not only excel domestic products, but also to surpass the goods from other countries in order to be able to win the customer.
In order to outperform the competitors, the companies have to pay attention to product differentiation and the creation of the unique benefits that the consumers will be ready to pay for. One of the ways to achieve it is branding; creation of the strong brand and usage of its advantages has a sustainable positive effect on sales.
There are many various factors affecting the brand itself, brand creation, brand management and particularly development of the marketing strategies for a brand. This study will focus on the most researched international aspect of consumer behavior (Tan 1987), the country of origin effect, which has a strong impact on many elements of the brand, including the perceived value, prestige, credibility and distinctiveness. The fact that consumers perceive products originating from different countries differently creates a room for the adjustment and improvement of the marketing strategies, which is crucial for the sustainable success.
This particular research focuses on the investigation of the impact of country of origin effect on brand perception of and purchase intentions towards Korean products in Russian skincare market. The choice was dictated by several reasons. First of all, there exists an interesting phenomenon of Korean skincare and makeup products popularity growth. As for 2018 the global market of K-beauty (Korean beauty) products accounted for 13 billion dollars; Russia is keeping up with the tendencies, having increased the size of import of Korean cosmetics by 27 times in five years – from 1,8 million dollars in 2011 to 48 million dollars in 2016 (Креативный потребитель [Creative consumer] 2018). No other country has similar figures regarding the growth of the export of its cosmetics products to Russia. Such impressive numbers make it interesting to investigate the country of origin effect that is definitely rather explicit in this case. Secondly, beauty and personal care market is rather big and well developed in Russia, with a turnover of 8.8 billion dollars (Beauty and Personal Care: Quarterly Statement Q1 2018 2018) and a stable growth of the skincare segment (Российский рынок косметики и парфюмерии: динамика, покупательские предпочтения и структура инвестиций [Russian cosmetics and perfumery market: dynamics, consumer preferences and investment structure] 2019), which creates the demand for different studies and offers a plenty of room for the implications of various researches. Lastly, the market concentration ratio is rather high. The small number of the big
8
corporations owns multiple popular brands originating from different countries: a company’s portfolio may include German, French, USA and Japanese brands at the same time. This raises the level of competition and creates a so-called effect of «brand cannibalism», which means that the brands owned by the same company may take each other’s’ market share. Knowledge of different perception peculiarities for the brands from different counties may not only help to create a better marketing strategy, adjusted for the certain market, but also to help manage the process of differentiation and thus help to avoid some of the negative effects of brand cannibalism.
Although, as already mentioned, the country of origin effect is a widely studied phenomenon, and there have been conducted multiple researches, this particular paper still has both scientific and practical value due to the several reasons. First of all, the country of origin effect differs depending on various characteristics. The time period (Papadopoulos 1988), the country, product (Zafar 2004) (Lin 2004) and market peculiarities all affect the strength and direction of the effect, as well as the purchase intentions (Koschate-Fischer 2012). Since the country of origin effect can vary depending on the exact setting features such as the country (Dornoff 1974) and time (Papadopoulos 1988) it makes sense to conduct a research for every specific market. As there had been no research conducted specifically for perception of Korean skincare products by Russian consumers in late 2010-s – beginning of 2020s, there existed an area for exploration.
Secondly, it makes sense to choose a certain social group and peculiarities of its preferences as an object, because studies prove that the country of origin effect can be affected by the social group the person belongs to (Papadopoulos 1988). Therefore, the choice of some particular narrow group with certain characteristics such as age, education and etc. is justified, as these are the factors that are proven to have an influence on the foreign goods perception (Dornoff 1974). Millennials, that have a strong effect on the current economy, being the most powerful consumer group and forming the market trends (Antsiperova 2019), seem to be a rather interesting and useful object for studying; what is more, there is a clear research gap, as no study focusing on exploring the country of origin effect on this particular group in this particular market had been conducted.
The goal of the research is to investigate the influence of information on Korea as a skincare brand’s country of origin on brand image perception and purchase intentions among Russian consumers, as well as to study the impact of Korean country image components on country of origin effect. The subject and the object being the country of origin effect of Korea on the Russian skincare market and preferences, perceptions and purchase intentions of the Russian female millennials with an average or above average income and higher education as well as country image components respectively.
9

In order to cover the existing research gaps, online surveys were run and the obtained data was statistically processed. The results of the calculations helped answering following research questions:
• Which factors influence Russian consumers’ choice of skincare products?
• How does information on Korea as skincare brand’s country of origin influence
different aspects of brand image perception among Russian consumers?
• How does information on Korea as skincare brand’s country of origin influence
Russian consumers’ purchase intentions?
• In which way do the components of Korea’s image influence country of origin
effect?