Beauty Made in China : Country of Origin Effect on Consumers’ Attitudes towards Chinese Cosmetics

Sammanfattning: Background: The emergence of global markets has created new hurdles for managers of international companies, yet provided with opportunities to take advantage of country of origin and transmit product information via “Made in” label. For many years China has been perceived negatively for a number of reason, though Chinese cosmetics is a new venture for the emerging economy.  Purpose: The purpose of this study is to widen the current knowledge of country of origin in the cosmetics industry. The aim was to explore the underlying reasons in the attitude formation of female European millennials towards country of origin of China with regard to cosmetics industry.  Method: Focus group discussions have been chosen as the most appropriate research method to fulfil the purpose of the study. Three focus groups consisted of female European millennials were conducted during which the visual aids were shown in order to contribute to answering research questions. A deductive content analysis was used to analyse the data obtained.  Conclusion: The results of this study revealed that the attitudes held by female European millennials towards cosmetics made in China are more negatively due to a weak product-countryimage,withsomeexceptions. Thisisconsistentwithprevious studies that China’s country of origin is still perceived as unfavourable. However, new insights have been discovered that respondents do not perceive any country as having a superior expertise in cosmetics, except of France.