The country of origin effect (COE) has been a central topic in scholarly international marketing literature for over half a century, but the concept seems to have stubbornly resisted all attempts at providing an encompassing account of how it comes to affect consumers in practice. Through an approach which treats COE as a perceptual phenomenon that is contingent on various psychological mechanisms this conceptual work revisits some three central theoretical issues of COE research and attempt to ferret out tentative means of addressing some of these long lived problems that have been identified in the literature to date.

Purpose: It has been suggested that the most potent form of the country-of-origin effect is derived from a country having a perceived specialization in a particular product category. By subjecting a novel conceptualization of how products and places form images in conjunction to experimental trial the evaluative pertinence of different facets of interrelation between country image and product categories is examined. Design/Methodology/Approach: A psychometric test-series, featuring a large number of brands from various product categories and countries was conducted. The results were subjected to structural equation modeling using a partial least squares approach. Findings: The findings suggest that the country-of-origin effect can be thought of as being derived simultaneously from several different image constructs, ranging from general to category-specific. These images generate country-of-origin effects in aggregation and the evaluative influence increases with the degree of specificity of how the image construct applies to a specific evaluation situation. Originality/Value: The present study represents an attempt to discern the relative size of the country-of-origin effects derived from different facets of the relationship between a country image and product categories. The results provide a tentative answer to the question of just how much product categories matter in the context of the country-of-origin effect.

Filling of the tool die directly influences dimensional tolerances and density variation. To minimize the variations in filling, both within different sections of the cavity and from part to part, are of great importance for produce high quality P/M parts. Filling of the tool die is also one of the limiting factors in the productivity in powder pressing. By using aeration filling in combination with bonded powder mixes, both weight scatter and productivity can be improved. In this presentation results are presented showing the benefit of using aeration filling for different types of powders