ABSTRACT
Country-of-origin (COO) is among many criteria that buyers consider when they evaluate competing automobile brands. However, in a world where components and parts for most manufactured products are globally outsourced, “made in” labels may no longer represent the reliable cognitive shortcuts they used to. In this study, multiple factors drawn from the American Automobile Labeling Act (AALA) data were used as proxies to determine the country of origin of passenger cars sold in the United States. Holding the “Country of corporate headquarters” as the anchor criterion, the findings indicate that “Country of final assembly” is the most accurate proxy for COO attribution, while “Country of origin of the transmission” is the least accurate. At the brand level, nine automobile brands exhibited high spatial homogeneity (concordance) meaning that the preponderance of their parts, final assembly, engine, and transmission originated from a single country. In contrast, four brands exhibited high spatial heterogeneity (discordance) on the same criteria. Implications for economic nationalism policies or campaigns during which consumers are incentivized or otherwise encouraged by governments and labor unions to “buy domestic” are derived.
Keywords
Globalization, country-of-brand-origin, buy American, American Automobile Labeling Act (AALA), spatial homogeneity (heterogeneity), economic nationalism.