Research, so far, has not dealt with explicit and implicit consumers’ product attitudes and its effects when framing the product with country-of-origin cues. The present paper addresses this research gap by surveying
consumers in Germany. The results provide evidence for an impact of COO cues on both attitude types. A negative effect on explicit attitude was revealed when the domestic product was framed either with a domestic COO branding or foreign COO branding, but by tendency a positive explicit attitude enhancement was identified for both COO branding conditions when framing a foreign product. Regarding implicit attitude, the empirical results also indicate a negative influence of both COO frames for the dome
stic product. However, the impact of a foreign frame on implicit attitude was positive to a moderate degree for the foreign product, while no impact was identified for the domestic frame.