Purpose Country image (CI) has been one of the most studied topics in international business, marketing, and consumer behaviour of the past five decades. Nevertheless, there has been no critical assessment of this field of research. The purpose of this paper is to understand the status and evolution of CI research. Design/methodology/approach The authors review 554 articles published in academic journals over 35 years. The authors examine publication, authorship, and research procedure trends in these articles as an empirical and quantitative assessment of the field. The authors identify weaknesses and strengths, and the authors address disconcerting and encouraging trends. Findings The authors find a number of laudatory trends: CI research is becoming less US-centric, more theory driven, more sophisticated in methodology, evaluating more diverse product categories, and making use of multiple cue studies. There are, however, two major methodological concerns: poor replication and questionable generalizability of findings. The authors also noted the influence of CI articles has been decreasing, as well as their rate of publication in top tier journals. Originality/value Since the authors present data that reflect actual practices in the field and how such practices have changed across time, the authors believe the study is of substantial value to CI researchers, journal editors, and instructors whose curriculum includes CI. The critical assessment and subsequent recommendations are accordingly empirically justified.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a longitudinal country-people image effect model involving a significant negative international incident between countries; study how such a model changes over time; and study the extent of image recovery in terms of how the offending country, people, and its products are perceived. Design/methodology/approach -Australian consumers were surveyed before, during, and a decade after the French nuclear testing in the Pacific in 1995. Model testing was conducted using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques. Findings -The model was strongly supported in all three-time points. During the crisis, negative feelings toward France/French rose and consumers' response to French products dropped. Country-people competency has risen over country-people character in explaining product evaluations. In the final period, the Australian views on country-people character and product response had more than recovered. The country-people character beliefs now play a significant role in influencing product evaluations after the crisis than before, while the impacts of country-people competency on product evaluation and response have diminished dramatically. Product evaluation is fairly stable over time. Originality/value -Studies to date have focused on country image at a point in time in relatively stable environmental conditions. The proposed model is helpful in understanding the processes of country-product image effects through the study of all attitude components and through differentiation of beliefs about country and people production-related and non-production related characteristics. The cross-temporal validation of the model indicates its usefulness for general applicability in country image effects research.

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Surveys of Australian consumers before, during, and after French nuclear testing in the Pacific in 1995 show clear evidence of negative reaction of consumers to the testing with regards to their ratings of France and French products. Although beliefs about French products did not decline following the announcement of the planned testing, evaluative feelings, and behavioral orientation towards France, the French and French products did. However, by 2005 behavioral orientation to French products, as well as attitudes to France and the French had more than recovered. The components of attitudes to products and country-people are examined in the context of theories of forgiveness to understand processes that could explain such a recovery. Implications for researchers and marketers in the increasingly frequent situations of international tensions are discussed.