Cross-national development and validation of an international business measurement scale: the COISCALE

There are countless important concepts in international business research that must be assessed using valid measurement scales. A prerequisite for advancing international business research is standardized constructs and associated measures that are reliable, valid, and dimensionally consistent. Because international business research is a costly undertaking, the construction of valid measurement scales is critical. Country image is an important concept in international business research because of its ability to influence purchase behavior and other critical outcomes. Using data from three diverse cultures--Japan, Turkey, and the USA--we devise a scale to measure country-of-origin image ("COI"). We then confirm the validity of the scale using recently defined methods for assessing measurement invariance in cross-national research. The resulting "COISCALE" is valid, yet parsimonious, and appears capable of assessing country image in a variety of national settings.