The COO effect is widely researched in the last decades. There are multiple findings suggesting that the COO can have a significant influence on consumers’ quality perception, purchase intention and numerous other forms of product evaluations. There are also many papers that are critical about the COO effect; they argue that the country image is mainly caused by brand image and that the COO effect on itself has no significant influence on consumers’ perceived quality. The critics and findings of prior COO research are further discussed in chapter 2.