The Influence of Country-of-Origin Effect on Russian Consumers Behavior in Cosmetics Industry

Background. For the past 5 years, the preferences of Russian consumers of cosmetics products significantly changed. If in 2015 women preferred buying European or American skin care products, currently many of them would likely choose Asian face masks or moisturizers. In general, the Russian cosmetics market was estimated $8.8 billion and its skin care industry was worth $2.2 billion in 2018 based on the information of Euro Monitor International. The forecast for this number was to rise even more in 2019-2021. Optimistic scenarios are also predicted to Korean, Japanese and Chinese cosmetic brands. Annually about 20-30 Asian companies enter the Russian market. This makes it more of a topical problem to study consumer’s behaviour under the influence of the Country-of-Origin effect (COE) when the shift in preferences is extremely evident. Purpose. The overall purpose of the work is to reveal the significance of the COE on Russian consumers in cosmetics market and develop recommendations for positioning Korean, Japanese and Chinese skin care companies. Methodology. The online questionnaire was used to study the preferences of Russian consumers and the significance of the COE influence on them. Later the descriptive statistics, correspondence tables and the correlation analysis were conducted with the help of the technological tool SPSS Statistics. Findings. As a result, a description of Russian consumers and their preferences under the influence of the COE and a set of recommendations for positioning Chinese, Japanese and Korean skin care items were developed and then the managerial implications were formulated. Delimitations. The first delimitation of the research is geographical one as most of the respondents of the survey are residents of Moscow or other major cities therefore the conclusions can be only applied to those specific customers and not to Russian consumers in general. The next one is the choice of the cosmetics industry and the product category (skin care). Furthermore, all of the findings and outcomes of analysis do not refer to the specific brands, but they relate to all the companies coming from selected nations. The last delimitation is the period of time for which the conclusions and recommendations are true and applicable. Professional significance. This research is the first attempt to examine Russian buyers behaviour in context of the COE as well as their perception of China, South Korea and Japan that still have problems with building up the effective marketing strategy in the mentioned market. The results can help managers and marketers of companies coming from those nations in better creating of the brand image, managing the country image and positioning skin care products in the Russian market and developing the correct and most efficient marketing strategy.