National stereotype effects on high versus low-contact service expectations: branding Indonesia

This paper is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to explore the impact of national stereotype contents (perceived warmth and perceived competence) associated with a service product’s country-of-origin, as regards high versus low-contact service type. Specifically, our first field experiment tests for the differential effect of perceived warmth and perceived competence on service quality expectations by US consumers of high-contact versus low-contact telecommunication services originating from the emerging Asian nation of Indonesia versus that of the emerged Asian economy of Japan. A follow-up study tested the effects of priming competence and warmth via online-video advertisements on US consumer evaluations of Indonesian telecommunication services. Results of our studies converge toward a more robust positive effect of both primed and unprimed competence (vs. warmth) perceptions on service evaluations across high and low-contact services. This paper marks a contribution to public diplomacy, the managing of country image and nation-branding, with practical implications to industry and government efforts to effectively market emerging nation-brands to worldwide customers and investors.