When you buy stuff one of the characteristics you may emphasis on is where the stuff is made: The country of origin.
Buying domestic goods has always been both a political issue and something that in people’s mind may be an extra quality sign. When I lived in The UK I noticed that meat was promoted as British (maybe except from Danish bacon). Now when back in Denmark all meat seems to be best when made in Denmark (maybe except from an Argentinian beef). However, regulations have already affected the made in marking for meat, so you have to state several countries of origins in the product lifecycle.
For some goods a given country of origin seems to be a quality sign. With luxury goods as fine shoes you can still get away with stating Italy or France as country of origin while most of the work has been made elsewhere as told in this article from The Guardian that Revealed: the Romanian site where Louis Vuitton makes its Italian shoes.
Country of origin is a product data element that you need to handle for regulatory reasons not at least when moving goods across borders. Here it is connected with commodity codes telling what kind of product it is in the custom way of classifying products as examined in the post Five Product Classification Standards.
When working with product data management for products that moves cross border you are increasingly asked to be more specific about the country of origin. For example, if you have a product consisting of several parts, you must specify the country of origin for each part.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 