US brands defy association with foreign policy

By John Gapper in Davos

Consumers around the world put aside any ill-feeling about US foreign policy when they choose their fast food, soft drinks and athletic shoes, a Harvard Business School study has found.

The survey of 1,800 consumers in 12 countries including Egypt, Turkey and Indonesia found that, despite expectations of a consumer backlash against US brands, most people still choose brands such as Coca-Cola and McDonald's.

About 88 per cent of people, a consistent figure across most of the countries surveyed, selected well-known global brands rather than local alternatives when asked which products they would like to buy. There was a rump of 12 per cent who did not want to buy such brands, associating them with the US and globalisation.

Professor John Quelch of Harvard Business School, who led the study with Douglas Holt, an assistant professor, said that local consumer boycotts following the US response to the September 11 attacks had proved short-lived. People did not seem to have switched allegiance en masse to new alternatives such as Mecca Cola.

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Excerpt from your article:
...Coca-Cola, for example, was seen as being a brand that used clean water in preparing its soft drinks.

Excerpt from another article:

The Indian parliament has banned the sale of Coke and Pepsi products in its cafeteria. Indian parliamentarians should take the logical next step, and ban the sale of Coke and Pepsi products in the entire country.

The ban came as the result of tests, including those by the Indian government, which found high concentrations of pesticides and insecticides, including lindane, DDT, malathion and chlorpyrifos, in the colas, making them unfit for consumption. Some samples tested showed the presence of these toxins to be more than 30 times the standard allowed by the European Union. Tests of samples taken from the U.S. of the same drinks were found to be safe.

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