The worldwide reputation of products produced in different countries | Hacker News Reader

The worldwide reputation of products produced in different countries

statista.com

29 pointswaqasaday52 comments

Really surprised to see the UK so high in the rankings. It might be my French bias talking, but it's a label that doesn't inspire confidence these days.

AFAIK, "Made in France" for mechanical/technological goods is usually seen as "overpriced and fragile".

As French, I don't remember the last time I've seen "Made in France" for a mechanical/technological good.

Cars

Wine, Cheese, Cars.

D.O.C. seems to be more common than Fabrique en France. ISTR Citroens having Fabrique en France on their manuals back in the day.

Calling wine and cheese technological goods seems to be pushing the definition a bit far.

I'd guess the French rating is mostly due to the high quality food they export. Same as Italy. Outside of Europe, you probably won't see a "made in France" label on anything except for cheese, wine and champagne.

Also fashion. Paris is still considered one of the great fashion centers of the world so any clothes coming out of there gets an extra reputation 'bonus'

Surprisingly, those are a very large share of France's exports.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_France#/media/File:...

French cars have a pretty poor reputation - budget, unreliable cars, vintage Citroen notwithstanding.

Devialet are a recent one. Very, very impressive engineering indeed and all designed and made in France: https://www.devialet.com/

The study didn't specify mechanical/technological goods. So food, clothing, etc. all count.

I certainly value British manufactures more highly than many continental ones, German, Swiss, and some Scandinavian ones being the exceptions.

Same for Italy. I always thought, like Greece and Poland, it's where EU manufacturers get cheap labor. On the flip side, I thought made in Japan would be top 3. People always look for the label on Japanese line products (zojirushi, fujifilm, etc)

Made in Italy still carries a lot of weight when it comes to cloths, leather goods and other fashion accessories. I guess that explains the positive score. They're also considered a producer and exporter of high quality food.

Labor in Italy isn't cheap at all, because of high pension contributions and labor taxation. Most "cheap" labor intensive productions moved abroad during the last 20 years, what's left is mostly high-quality high-price products, or highly automated ones.

I've found that in the UK, it's common to put made in the UK on there not out of any sense of national pride, but it's just a tradition (which makes sense given it's origins).

I live in the UK, and I'm also surprised to see it so high. The TV series "The IT Crowd" used "made in the UK" as a joke explanation for faulty products, which is closer to how I perceive it.

The pertaining clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EBfxjSFAxQ

Right? Probably moved up a couple places under the promise we'd not let British Leyland tape together any more vehicles.

I think certain British items are valued, especially in the luxury range where heritage and quality matters:

-Fashion / clothes, e.g. suits and fabric in general, shoes.

-Engineering(even if foreign owned), e.g. Rolls Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin.

-Design, e.g. furniture.

-Consumables, e.g. alcoholic drinks such as whisky or gin.

'these days'? Brexit FUD? If not please explain.

Here's a nice reminder of the kind of thing UK engineering can do (nothing comparable from France recently): http://cars.mclaren.com/ultimate-series/p1

A lot of HiFi kit is designed and made in the UK from Meridian, KEF, Naim, Linn, Bower & Wilkins, Chord and a bunch of others I’m doubtless forgetting.

All world class stuff and at a range of prices from expensive to eye watering.

Video game design is another interesting one. Believe UK is third in the world for number of game houses after Japan and the US. That’s a very surprising figure to me and one I’d love to know the reason to.

Doubtless many industries like that across our fair isle which are world class in their little niche.

It's interesting that the EU is rated so high, while its members so low. Any manufacturer from for example Poland or Spain can select 'made in eu' label.

> It's interesting that the EU is rated so high, while it's members so low

It's interesting that the EU is rated so high, while SOME of its members so low.

Germany leads the chart, UK isn't far behind, Italy and France also.

Also, being 20 in a world with 200+ countries is far from "so low"...

"its members"

EU Exports == Germany. If that is what people thinks when they are thinking about EU, it is probably true.

Agreed. I generally see "made in the EU" as a warning flag since it makes it seem like for some reason they're too embarrassed to name the actual country the product was made in.

Yes I view it the same on my case, if they put the "made in the EU" label, it's generally done in eastern europe.

Well you can usually find out "on the box" where they're located (funnily enough the product that had this "most hidden" was from Belgium)

Or you have a company located in a 'good' European country that's trying to hide that they're outsourcing all their manufacturing to a cheap EU country. They hope you'll see German Company + Made in the EU and jump to the conclusion that it's made in Germany.

Interestingly Made in Japan was considered cheap labour until Sony changed that perception.

See this article from 1978: http://people.com/archive/made-in-japan-once-was-a-joke-akio...

>The index is calculated using the average weighted share of positive assessments reached by each country.

From their methodology page. I would argue that there is just as much information in the other end of the scale.

For instance, China is extremely respected, iPhone, and not, low cost electronics, at the same time.

Maybe a country with no positive but also no negative associations would be more desirable than one with split positive and negative ratings.

Would be nice to be able to browse the raw data.

I'm not sure that China is that respected in the public mind for the iPhone. They came out last in this ranking, meaning not many positive associations, and it's not for nothing that Apple writes "Designed in California" on the back.

For the iPhone, it's the US Apple brand that gets the respect, not China.

It's important to note that "the import volume of each country is used as a weighting factor". I don't know if they are referring to weighting their participants responses based on their home country, or weighting the results based on the country being ranked, but I feel this could bias the results toward countries that are heavy exporters (like Germany).

You have to weight countries by some factor. Using imports is probably a good idea to have a good representation of buying decisions. If you used population you'd end up with a high share for India even though they import relatively little, making the labels less important.

But given that EU countries generally only import things from other EU countries (due to the tariffs), it could similarly bias towards EU countries that export to most of the EU (like Germany). That's not to say I don't agree with the general placement of countries, I just think it's interesting how many countries on the list are from the EU.

[I'm also a little surprised how well Australia and New Zealand ranked. I didn't realise that we exported enough "Made in Australia" stuff to be listed on something like this.]

> EU countries generally only import things from other EU countries

Actually EU countries have MASSIVE imports of Chinese goods, but we also import from lots of other non-EU countries.

Probably they used it to weight the opinions of importers about the exporters, not the other way around, which would't make sense. As such, US opinions would have much much higher weight than German ones.

EDIT: fixed importers/exporters

http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/

Interesting to see how Japan holds its place amongst all the scandals of some of its biggest corporations recently.

The biggest scandal was probably airbags and there, most consumers won't know the company or where it was from. Would've probably been different if it had been consumer goods.

The Kobe Steel scandal is pretty hot right now, where it has been exposed that they are sending false quality report to customers, for years.

Again, not consumer product right?

But a lot of consumer products use it, like cars. I would say it definitely cast doubt on customers' overall confidence on whether Made In Japan is worthy of its price

again mostly dependent on methodology, and polled sample

I'd be curious to know why Ireland is so low on the list. Do they produce a lot of cheap products? I would've expected them to be on a level with the UK or France.

It's a measure of reputation not of actual manufacturing quality. Ireland doesn't really have too much of a global reputation, good or bad, when it comes to manufacturing.

Lack of awareness of the polled people would probably be the cause, depending on the methodology, people would probably associate Ireland with Europe or UK.

this is just a generalisation... made in's perceived value is different in high end clothing, to manufacturing, to fine perfumes, to high tech.

Where is Made in Singapore! Singapore make great products :)

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