Purchase of Global Shampoo Brands

The article I choose to criticize and evaluate is an explanatory study on the effect of the country origin of the shampoo brands on the Lebanese consumers when they purchase them, in other words the author is testing the correlations between country of manufacture and consumer behavior, purchase intent, and the quality evaluation of the consumer on the product (Shampoo). I’ll talk about each component of the article and criticize and evaluate them, then I’ll talk about what is missing in the article and the limitation of the study.

The author started with an Abstract, where he briefly talked about the purpose of the study where he mentioned what the study aims for, which is the effect of the country origin of the shampoo brands on the Lebanese consumers when they purchase them, I believe the purpose was clear and concise and gives a good idea about what the study aims for and why it was conducted. Also he talked about methodology or approach, the findings, the practical implications, and the originality/value, I’ll talk about them later in the report. His Introduction was about the global cosmetic industry and its sales which estimated at US$ 230 billion in 2003, and mentioned that the hair care industry is the largest with 22% share of total consumer expenditure among other cosmetic products, after that he talked about the Lebanese shampoo market, and defined the Country Of Origin (COO) as the “Made in ___” label found on the product’s package as a simple definition for country of origin. His introduction will help the reader to understand what the article and study is about and give an idea about the industry and prepare the reader for the study.

The Literature review was a good background history about previous researches and studies with many different hypothesis and findings such as the research of Darling and Kraft on Finnish consumers which supported the hypothesis that the country of origin of a product has an affect on the attitude of the consumers towards the product, and the finding of Papadopoulos which is that the country of origin perceptions affects the purchasing choice of the buyers, but on the other hand there was a Saudi study on the Saudi consumers and retailers found that both groups prioritize price and quality over the country of origin perceptions. Also in the literature review there were many other interesting hypothesis and findings for other researchers.

The researcher developed four Research hypothesis based on the literature review, the first hypothesis says that the quality perceptions of shampoo brands sourced from different countries varies based on demographic variables. The second hypothesis stated that purchase intention of shampoos sourced from different countries is different. The third hypothesis tells us that evaluation of specific attributes differs based on difference in the country of origin of a specific shampoo brand. Finally the fourth hypothesis stated that the evaluation