Consumer Preferences for Country‐of‐Manufacture in Japanese‐Cuisine: Introducing the Country‐of‐Cuisine Concept

ABSTRACT The concept of country‐of‐origin (COO) has at least five dimensions: country‐of design, of assembly, of parts, of manufacturing, and of brand. This complexity reflects the different ways in which the COO can influence consumers' product evaluations. This study investigated consumers' evaluation for the importance of the country‐of‐manufacture (COM) by proposing the country‐of‐cuisine (COC) concept, which is the new COO dimension, to distinguish from other dimensions and identified COM. This study employed Best‐Worst‐Scaling to evaluate the food values of Japanese‐cuisine in Shanghai, China. In addition, using latent‐class‐logit analysis, we classified respondents and compared the attributes characterizing their consumption behaviors to evaluate the COM. The main findings indicate that origin—conceptualized as COM as a food value ‐ was generally not considered important by residents of Shanghai, but it played a more significant role for older and more frequent consumers of Japanese cuisine. These findings have implications for Japanese‐restaurant owners and policymakers promoting Japanese‐cuisine and agricultural products internationally. This study, as an initial exploration utilizing the COC concept, will also serve as a reference for future researchers.