Brand what? Listen to this; according to Anderson Analytics latest brand origin study that sampled 1,000 US College students at over 375 US universities during the fall 2006 semester, 33.7% of the participants believed that Lexus is an American firm while 55,7% said that Hyundai’s Japanese. Forty-nine percent thought Swedish carmaker Volvo to be German while 58.4% said Land Rover is an American company. Saab, Swedish? Yeah right. 40.4% mistakenly thought that it’s a German car manufacture!

"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.

According to Anderson, while students’ ignorance for brand origin may a bliss in some cases –eg. most believe that Motorola is Japanese (…), country of origin plays an important part in making luxury goods and automobiles more exclusive and exotic. And vice-versa, may we add as Hyundai proves. From the 246 people who said Hyundai’s was Korean, just 42% of them thought Korea makes good products while 85% of them said Japan makes good products. From the 589 students who wrongly believed Hyundai’s Japanese, 83% of them believe that Japan makes great products while only 38% think Korean products are good. Go figure…

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Wow. Poor Nokia.

More like:

Wow, poor American students......

those students need to pick up a newspaper...

Can so many people be really that ignorant and stupid?!

I was expecting something like that. I remember another study about brands and similarly most people thought Nokia is a Japanese company.

I'd heard that too, but 4.4 percent is much lower that I had expected.

I hope you won't call me stupid, but that's what i've thought back in 1998 when my father bought me my 1st ever cell phone, Nokia 5110.........

The reason why i've thought it's Japanese...was the name!

It is a common misconception and not trying to correct it was probably a conscious decision for Nokia. After all, Japan has been known for their high technology for quite some time, while Finland used to be known for... erm... not much I suppose.

The name itself is typical Finnish (not related to Japanese... probably). It's the name of the original home town of the company, actually.

This is the real Nokia : - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER