Consumers make stereotypical associations between products and countries based on their perceptions of a country's know-how and reputation relative to the design, manufacturing, or branding of particular generic goods. When such associations are shared globally, they reflect product ethnicity, a concept that the authors empirically explore in this article. Operationalization of product ethnicity is based on country–product associations that consumers make with either a product or a country as the initial stimulus, resulting in a combined two-way measurement. The authors first investigate product ethnicity at an exploratory level across five survey countries for a large set of products and countries (Study 1). They identify what they term “context-centered association tendencies” because respondents tend to associate goods more closely with their own country. The authors then relate product ethnicity and context-centered association tendencies to the country-of-origin literature and test research hypotheses with a new set of countries (Study 2), comprising two collectivist cultures (China and Mexico) and two individualist cultures (Germany and the United States). Finally, Study 3 shows that consumers are more willing to buy product offerings that are congruent rather than noncongruent with product ethnicity.

Schwartz's value system (SVS) has been widely used in diVerent disciplines (e.g., psychology, management, and marketing). Although the value structure seems to be validated when data are analyzed through multidimensional scaling, we show that the quasi-circumplex structure of human values is not supported when conWrmatory analysis approaches (e.g., CIRCUM and constrained conWrmatory factor analysis) are used. Based on two samples of French and Swiss respondents, conWrmatory tests of SVS provide little support for its quasi-circumplex structure, mainly due to problems of construct and discriminant validity resulting from multicollinearity between value types.

This paper is a reply to the paper by Josiassen and Harzing about the continued relevance of country‐of‐origin (COO) research in marketing (forthcoming, EMR). It develops detailed and articulated responses to each of their arguments. Although sharing some of Josiassen and Harzing's views, this reply maintains that the case of COO research raises significant issues in terms of its relevance to marketing practice.

Cet article présente une vue d'ensemble du processus de diffusion d'un produit nouveau et du concept d'innovativité, dans le cadre des biens de consommation. Il retrace l'évolution des apports théoriques et des contributions empiriques des trente dernières années, en mettant l'accent sur les efforts de modélisation du processus de diffusion, l'identification des facteurs liés au degré d'innovativité des acheteurs, l'opérationnalisation des variables, en soulignant l'importance d'approches intégratives faisant le lien entre les processus de diffusion et d'adoption.

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