They can't identify you.
Can you identify them?

Though college students are quick to adopt the latest technologies and fashions, few are actually aware of where their favorite brands come from, reports MarketingCharts, drawing from new research from Anderson Analytics.

The study results were culled from an online survey of 1,000 college students across 375 United States universities, a sample size representing a confidence interval of +/-3.1% at the 95% confidence level.

Students were asked to match brands with home countries and were also asked which countries were better at producing certain products. The quality of individual brands was also rated.

Managing Partner Tom H.C. Anderson elaborated on the state of the college co-ed's brand awareness mindset. "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."

Although Nokia dominates the mobile phone market, only 4.4 percent could adequately identify it as Finnish. 53 percent of students thought Nokia was Japanese, an attribution also made by 57.8 percent of students of Korean electronics company Samsung.

Cell phone manufacturers and car makers, were among those least accurately identified over the course of the study.
Misidentified brands included:

• Adidas, which 48.5 percent of co-eds thought came from the United States and not Germany
• Motorola, marked Japanese by 42 percent and American by 37.9 percent of students
• LG, a Korean brand whose origin only 8.9 percent could accurately name

Anderson observed cell phone manufacturers were not hurt by mistaken origins, and in some cases brands like LG and Samsung were better able to "compete on a par with companies like Nokia and Motorola" as a result.

With other brands, however, origin seemed to matter a great deal.

• Hèrmes scored 23 percent better among students who correctly identified it as a French, rather than UK-based, brand.
• Japanese brand Lexus suffered a 13.3 percent ratings difference from students who believed it was American.
• Among the 31.2 percent of students who could identify IKEA as Swedish, IKEA rated 11.9 higher than with the 23.6 percent who believed it betrayed US origins.

Anderson pointed out a country of origin can have a positive impact on brand equity, "but if no action is taken to educate the new generation of American consumers, this impact may be lost."

The survey was conducted in fall 2006 by GenX2Z.com, an Anderson Analytics subsidiary that provides in-depth research on the youth market.

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.

MarketingCharts has additional information and graphs on the study.