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The objective of the study is to identify both reasons for ignoring and for paying attention to the country of origin (COO) by consumers when choosing brands of durable goods.

In this paper a qualitative approach was applied, i.e. 25 in-depth semistructured interviews with Polish consumers of durable goods purposively selected out of those who had previously participated in a quantitative survey conducted by the authors.

Among the reasons for paying attention to the COO when choosing brands of durable goods, cognitive (rational), affective (emotional) and normative factors have been identified, while among the reasons for ignoring the COO by consumers, the authors identified only cognitive (rational) and affective (emotional) factors.

The conclusions can be applied by brand managers, e.g. when making decisions whether and why to communicate COO dimensions.

This paper contributes to the international marketing literature as it develops a deeper insight into consumer behavior with reference to the consumers’ reasons for paying attention to and ignoring the COO, with very little published on the latter in particular. Furthermore, it is one of still relatively few qualitative studies conducted so far on COO taking a perspective of a consumer, especially the one from an emerging market from the European Union (EU).

The purpose of this study is to propose an innovative and efficient process in urban policy-making that combines a divergent and creative method with a convergent and strategic one. At the same time, the purpose is also to propose a useful innovation to enforce the usability of both methods. On the one hand, mission-oriented policies run the risk of being overly focused on the present and of not being able to develop preparedness in organization. On the other hand, scenario development has the reverse problem it often does not point out how to use scenario narratives to inform and devise short-term strategic actions.

The paper proposes an innovative methodological approach, the mission-oriented scenarios, which hybridizes Mazzucato's mission-oriented public policy framework with Jim Dator's Manoa school four futures method. The proposed methodological innovation emerges from a urban foresight academic-led project carried out in the context of the Metropolitan City of Turin, Italy, where a first application of the mission-oriented scenarios was tested on six different focal issues (from reindustrialization to cultural policies) and the scenario narratives were used as sources for the grounding of 12 missions and 48 strategic actions towards 2030.

Mission-oriented scenarios can contribute to the generation of more sustainable and inclusive urban public policies. This methodological proposal is based on an original mix of knowledge exchange procedures borrowed from methodological approaches with different backgrounds: the mission-oriented and the archetypal scenarios. Their conjunction could support the formulation of ambitious yet pragmatic policies, giving a plurality of actors the opportunity to act and establish fruitful and lasting partnerships.

The paper reconstructs one of the first urban foresight projects carried out in a major Italian city by two prestigious universities and exposes a methodological innovation resulting from reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of the project, which opens the door to the development of a new scenario technique.