Toward a Universal Account of Country-Induced Predispositions: Integrative Framework and Measurement of Country-of-Origin Images and Country Emotions

Abstract

Understanding how consumers use a product’s country-of-origin (COO) cue is fundamental to explaining their behavior in a globalized marketplace. While the study of COO is one of the most popular topics in international marketing, the ambiguity regarding its conceptualization, composite nature, operationalization, and measurement deserves further scrutiny. The authors propose an integrative framework that unites two separate areas of research on the COO cue: performance-related COO images and performance-unrelated country emotions. The authors reconcile diverse existing perspectives from both areas into the overarching country-induced predispositions model. Conceptualizations and measurement approaches for the model’s five components are developed and empirically validated across three countries and with five COOs. The model offers researchers and managers with an interest in the COO cue a flexible and operational roadmap, with scales both for in-depth analyses and parsimonious additional testing.