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Introduction
Since Ernest [12] Dichter (1962) referred to the significance of the "made-in" information cue, research on the so-called "Country of Origin-effects" has become one of the major domains within the literature on international marketing and consumer behaviour. Unfortunately, it remains to be one of the most controversial fields as well. Despite extensive efforts undertaken by researchers to validate and relate the numerous approaches to Country of Origin-effects, recent reviews still deplore the lack of conceptual, methodological and theoretical transparency ([86] Verlegh and Steenkamp, 1999; [68] Papadopoulos and Heslop, 2003; [47] Laroche et al. , 2005; [85] Usunier, 2006). It is for instance still unclear if, how and to which extent the CoO-effect impacts on consumer evaluations.
These "if, how and to which extent questions" hinge on the nature of the CoO-effect. Overall, the term CoO-effect refers to a specific marketing phenomenon, i.e. consumers (sub)consciously incorporating a CoO-stimulus (like for instance the "Made-in" label) as an evaluative criterion in their formation of an attitude towards a product. The processing of such a CoO-cue can be of a cognitive, affective or conative/normative nature ([40] Johansson, 1989; [62] Obermiller and Spangenberg, 1989). Cognitive CoO-effects are characterized by the fact that consumers make rational use of the CoO-cue. Put differently, they try to distract information about the product's quality attributes from CoO. Affective CoO-effects are different in such a way that the CoO-cue is said to arouse a purely emotional reaction in the consumer. Conative/normative effects on the other hand manifest themselves in a situation where the consumer's behavioural intentions towards a product are guided by moral reflections generated by the CoO-cue. Within this paper, CoO-effects will be dealt with from a cognitive perspective. Our decision to follow a cognitive approach towards the analysis of CoO-effects is motivated by the fact that several studies within the field empirically established how consumers' evaluations of foreign products are most frequently and substantially determined by cognitive processing of the CoO-cue ([78] Sauer et al. , 1991; [71] Peterson and Jolibert, 1995; [86] Verlegh and Steenkamp, 1999). As such, the cognitive CoO-effect can be considered as the most important type of effect. [86] Verlegh and Steenkamp (1999) think that the predominance of cognitive CoO-effects is related to the fact that a...