Using Fuzzy Set Theory to Assess Country-of-Origin Effects on the Formation of Product Attitude

Several researchers on country-of-origin (coo) have expressed their interest in knowing how consumers’ emotional reactions toward coo-cues affect product attitude formation. This paper shows how Fuzzy Set Theory might serve as a useful approach to that problem. Data was gathered by means of selfadministered questionnaires. Technically, orness of OWA-operators enabled us to distinguish consumers expressing highly positive versus less positive emotions toward coo. It appeared that this variance in emotional estate goes together with a difference in aggregating product-attribute beliefs.