Martin Nielsen

The Country-of-Origin principle has been known for quite some time. Originally invented to warn against and to stigmatize foreign products, today its purpose is much more one of promoting and recommending products that originate from a specific country. Although globalization and convergence of markets by some authors are predicted to make the "Made in" concept obsolete, replacing it with a "Made by" concept, there are reasons to believe that the country of origin will still remain important also in the years to come. That is why this paper sets out to show the various forms in which the country of origin may occur, illustrated by examples from a Danish-German context. On that background a scale is developed which is able to take into consideration the diffe¬rent degrees of how strongly the country of origin is visible in marketing communi¬cations. Furthermore, the self-evaluation of Danish companies in respect of the promotional effect of the "Made in Denmark" label is critically reviewed. Attempts to culturally explain this phenomenon conclude this paper.