Apparently, disciplines like international trade, political science, international relations, sociology, and international finance take more interest in country research than international marketing.  Some of them have an organized research agenda that defines and measures an “abstract construct” with a “composite score.”  For example, International Finance regularly evaluates “risk ratings” of the countries on a global basis.  Private organizations like the Economist Intelligence Unit, Institutional Investor, or Moody’s offer professional services in this regard.  Similarly Freedom House and Fraser Institute evaluate political freedom.

Most country rating studies use secondary data, weigh them in a certain manner and offer a quantitative measure.  Some of them use primary survey to substantiate the data collected through secondary sources.  Sample survey, focus group and Delphi techniques are common in this regard.  Table 1 provides a list of some of the country ratings currently available.  Governments, international organizations, multinationals use them for environmental scanning, segmentation, entry strategy, market development, operation/investment risk, and policy formulations. 

Despite the popularity of country ratings one may observe a paucity of comparative research of the country ratings.  Research could be conducted to test the reliability/validity of the ratings, identify their overlapping, investigate their relationship, and determine their usefulness.  The table given below is indicative of what we could do in the area of country ratings.  More research questions can be thought of as there are quite a few indices involving a large number of countries.
  

Agenda/Focus	Example of Research Questions
Reliability and validity	To what extent a global competitive rating of the World Economic Forum truly measures the competitiveness of a country?  Similar questions can be asked for other ratings/measures.
Methodological overlapping	Many of the variables are repeatedly used in measuring globalization, country risk, competitiveness or economic freedom.  How does that affect the reliability or usefulness of the measures?
Comparison of related concepts	What is the relationship between globalization and country competitiveness?  Or, how does the FDI inflow of country correlates with the FDI Confidence Index?
Cause and effect	Does competitiveness or globalization contribute to the human development of a country?  Or, to what extent economic freedom contributes to competitiveness?
Historical trend analysis	Do the ratings offer consistent relationship on a longitudinal basis (a historical analysis)?  Do newer measures offer better results (an effect of proliferations of knowledge)?
Managerial usefulness	What is the usefulness of the ratings in business decisions?  Which decision areas relate to which measures?  What is the awareness level of country ratings among international managers?

An investigation of 12 country ratings (the number could be more) involving about 50-100+ countries per rating can be a gigantic task.  The complexity increases with the number of countries, conceptual differences, and methodologies.  It will require substantial interest, effort, and above all monetary support for conducting such research.  I will urge the Global Marketing SIG to come up with positive strategies to investigate the phenomenon.  This may involve the formation of research teams with members with diverse backgrounds.  CIBERs may provide the initial funding.  And, if there is a collaborative effort from the Global Marketing SIG I am willing to participate in that process.