The challenge of publishing research about a never-ending subject for marketing scholars: The country of origin

The country of origin (COO) represents one of the main topics in the marketing literature and a large body of knowledge about it has already been published. This commentary essay tries to explain why it seems to be a never-ending subject for marketing scholars and the reason why the paper we published in this Journal few years ago contributed to the literature and has achieved the Google i-10 high citation-impact ranking. Analysing the effect of COO on a specific factor such as brand associations, the use of a methodology that cope with the critics of some scholars about the overstressed of COO in the past research, and the selection of an emerging market – the Chinese one – as country in which testing the COO have helped our paper to be cited. Based on these elements, some future research topics are also suggested.