Abstract. This article reviews the literature regarding the effect of country of origin on buyer evaluations of products. The issue is important for countries (especially resource-poor, developing countries) that need to increase manufactured exports and for firms that source products in countries different fromwhere sold. Marketing inferences are drawn, and implications for future research are developed.* The international product life-cycle model incorporates only supply-side variables-such as, product competition, complexity of production, and relative production costs. Demand-side variables-such as, the effect of country sourcing on the demand for that product -are not considered. Ifthe latter is important, the usefulness of the international product life-cycle model as a guide for product sourcing would be limited. The significance of the location of production on demand can be approached as an information cue question. That is, from an information theoretic perspective, products may be conceived as consisting of an array of information cues, both intrinsic (taste, design, fit) and extrinsic (price, brand name, warranties). Each cue provides customers with a basis for evaluating the product. The study of informational cues has generated much basic research in marketing-including the impact of various cues on perceived risk, on perceived quality, and on purchasing behavior, and also on how cues are processed by customers. Much applied research by industry centers around the impacts of intrinsic and extrinsic cues regarding products. The informational cue on which this article focuses is the country of origin of a product. Usually this is communicated by the phrase, "Made in (name of country)." Both empirical observations and experiments indicate that country of origin has a considerable influence on the quality perceptions of a product. One such example is the West German firm, Battenfeld Mashinenfabriken, which established production of its standard injection molding machines to the U.S. to serve both the North American and Latin American markets (Business Week, 1979). Although Battenfeld Mashinenfabriken has a Brazilian subsidiary with access to that country's lush export subsidies, the company's sales director stated that many customers "won't buy a machine made in Brazil. U.S.-made products, by contrast, find ready acceptance abroad."Another example encountered several years ago by one of the authors was a Puerto Rican shoe manufacturerwho shipped his entire production to New York City and back and advertised those shoes as being from New York. Experience had convinced himthat Puerto Ricans would buy his shoes more readily when they were perceived as made in New York ratherthan in Puerto Rico. Similar anecdotes are widespread in developing countries. Experimental research on the country-of-origin informational cue is reviewed next.

Abstract. A summary of principal findings regarding the export behavior of 423 small-and medium-sized Wisconsin manufacturing firms. Data were classified according to stages in the export development process and analyzed by multiple regression. * Export development is perhaps the most widely studied and least understood aspect of INTRODUCTION international business-as attested by the large body of literatureon internationaltrade and by the extremely empirical approach usually taken by analysts whose unit of study is the firm.1The latter typically use only very simple implicit models for data gathering, and then let the data speak for themselves. This approach has yielded an array of noncomparable information. A commonly acceptable export model is needed. The analysis summarized here explores the meaningfulness of a "stages" model for examining export behavior, particularly of small-and medium-sized firms. Such a model could be integrated into broader "stages" concepts of the firm.Italso leads to policy implications that differfromthat of non-stage concepts. The model used is-that the export development process of firms tends to occur in the following

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This study is an analysis of variables associated with the profitability of exporting. Such information is useful both for export management and for government agencies that wish to promote business commitment to exporting. The methodology utilizes a multiple regression analysis of data in questionnaire responses from 168 Wisconsin manufacturing firms in 1979. It provides a means for evaluating difficult-to-measure export marketing considerations (such as, export marketing channels, export methods, and foreign dealer support) from the supply-side of the demand-supply equation which can be conceptualized as export marketing analysis from the supply-side. * Many analysts have been perplexed by low export performances of countries, such as, the U.S., whose currency exchange rates seemingly should elicit substantial export efforts. This contradiction has led to a sizable literature on the export behavior of firms, most of which focuses on variables associated with whether or not firms export. [Bilkey 1978; Buckley and Pearce 1979; Cavusgil and Nevin 1979; Fenwick and Amine 1979; Lee and Brasch 1978; Wiedersheim-Paul, Olson, and Welch, 1978]. A different focus has been the structure of institutions that facilitate export development [Brasch 1978]. An implicit assumption underlying much of the research is that the initiation of exporting is the critical bottleneck to increasing exports. More and more, this assumption is being challenged by evidence that a much larger percentage of firms has export experience than was believed earlier.1 The problem now apears to be that too many firms with a good export potential plus several years of export experience still export an unaccountably very low percentage of their total sales.2 Both the Marshallian model of the firm and finance models suggest that low export performance results from low export profitability. Empirical findings on this relationship have been mixed. [See Bilkey 1978, pp. 34-35.] The lack of consistent empirical relationships between export profitability and percentage of sales exported, coupled with the theoretical role of profitability in export behavior plus the practical importance of profitability for a firm implies that additional research on this subject is needed. Accordingly, a study was undertaken to ascertain: (a) the relation between managements' perceptions of the profitability of exporting their firms' products relative to selling those same products in the home country, with (b) the percent of their firms' total sales of those products that are exported, and (c) the variables that correlated with managements' perceptions of the profitability of exporting their firms' products relative to selling them in the home country. (During the remainder of this article, "managements' perceptions of the profitability of exporting their firms' products relative to selling those same products in the home country" will be referred to as the perceived relative profitability of exporting.) The study is cross-sectional, so the findings have no implications for ex...

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