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Stamford, CT --- May 24, 2007--- College students
may love to use the latest gadgets and wear the hottest fashions,
but they may not know where their favorite brands originate,
according to exclusive new research from market research firm
Anderson Analytics. Fifty three percent of students thought
Finnish cell phone company Nokia to be Japanese, while 57.8
percent thought Korean electronics company Samsung was Japanese.
And 48.5 percent mistakenly thought Adidas clothing came from
the United States, not Germany.
"For the most part, this next generation of educated
American consumers either have no clue where the brands they
use come from or simply assume everything comes from the United
States, Japan
or Germany," said Tom H.
C. Anderson, Managing Partner, Anderson Analytics, http://www.andersonanalytics.com.
"Marketers need to realize that country of origin can
have a positive impact on their brand equity, particularly
if they are a luxury goods or automobile manufacturer,"
added Anderson. "But
if no action is taken to educate the new generation of American
consumers, this impact may be lost."
The study is based on an online survey of 1,000 US college student conducted
during the fall 2006 semester by Anderson Analytics’ GenX2Z.com,
which provides in-depth research on the youth market. See
how students rated brands here: http://www.andersonanalytics.com/reports/BrandAndCountries.pdf.
Cell phones shot to the top of the most misidentified country
of origin category.
Although Nokia has dominated the cell phone market, just
4.4 percent of students knew that Nokia was made in Finland;
and just 8.9 percent knew LG cell phones came from Korea.
“Even strong American brands like Motorola are falsely believed
to be Japanese,” said Jesse Chen, GenX2Z practice lead, “probably
because the name sounds Japanese.” Forty two percent of students
surveyed thought Motorola was Japanese compared to 37.9 percent
who said it was American.
While students’ ignorance hurts some marketers, according
to Anderson, for
cell phone manufacturers ignorance truly is bliss.
“We found for cell phones, country of origin didn’t seem
to affect students’ perception of the brand, since Motorola
was ranked equally well whether students thought it was from
America
or Japan,”
said Anderson. “This has allowed Korean brands, like
LG and Samsung, to compete on a par with companies like Nokia
and Motorola.”
But “country of origin plays an important part in making
luxury goods and automobiles more exclusive and exotic,” Anderson said.
French Hermes scored higher with students who correctly identified
it as a French rather than a UK brand with 23 percent more giving it high ratings.
Similarly, fewer students (a 13.3% difference) gave Japanese
Lexus top ratings when they mistakenly thought it was a US-made
car.
“Marketers of luxury brands and automobiles should be doing
more to play up their country of origin,” said Anderson. “If more students correctly identified them, the percentages
rating them highly would increase.”
Even brands like IKEA which compete on cost may benefit from
their ties to an exotic country of origin, said Anderson. In IKEA’s case, among the 31.2 percent of respondents who
knew IKEA was a Swedish brand, the brand rating was 11.9 percent
higher than among the 23.6 percent of respondents who though
IKEA was a US brand.
Anderson Analytics will undertake further study to determine
if it is actually beneficial for a company to be mistakenly
known as being from a different country.
Methodology:
A representative sample of 1,000 US
college students at over 375 US
universities and colleges were interviewed. In addition to
matching brands with their home countries, students were asked
which countries were best at producing certain products, as
well as producing quality products overall. Students were
also asked to rate the quality of individual brands. The
total sample size represents a confidence interval of +/-3.1%
at the 95% confidence level. The survey was fielded online
in late 2006.
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