ooohh dear, they don't like us..

The survey cited 40 U.S.-based companies and asked consumers who said they were trying to avoid buying U.S. brands to rate each one of them by how closely they were identified with being "American," and whether or not they deliberately avoided buying their products. The survey then plotted each company's position on a quadrant divided into "safe" and "insulated" squares at the bottom and "at risk" and "problem squares" at the top.
this is exciting news really. here we have a survey that links perception with conception based on available information. US corporations have an expectation that the US government is providing them with the best results their money can buy. There can be no mistaking the foreign policy behavior of the US as differing from the intent of US business. They are one and the same.

Those deemed "safe" or "insulated" generally were either not seen as particularly "American" (Visa, Kodak, Kleenex or Gillette), or they apparently lacked real competition (Microsoft, Heinz, and Disney).
kleenex, mmm. a company that is one of the most forest abusive in the world, gets an almost pass from euro interests, yet is perceived as being canadian. why? well because they are single handedly destroying the canadain boreal forest. I am not sure how gillette is different than schick.

Visa was the single best performer: only 17 percent of consumers identified as intending to avoid U.S. brands thought that it was "extremely American," and only 15 percent said they intended to boycott it. Fifty-four percent said they had used Visa at least once in the previous month.
visa not an issue?? well maybe there is something to be said for their satiation of the market place rather then the perception of brand nation connectivity. visa is the most useful card, not the most well liked. and euro based visa accounts are kept at very low interest rates rather than the typical US usury abuse.

"Problem" companies, on the other hand, included those which more than a third of boycotting consumers said they intended to avoid, and more than 40 percent of consumers said they considered to be "extremely American." On that scale, Marlboro was found to be the most problematic. Sixty percent of respondents said they avoided the product, while two-thirds said they considered it to be "extremely American." Only McDonald's had a higher "American" score, at 73 percent, but only 42 percent of respondents said they avoided the Golden Arches.
i like this one, in that of that 42% who avoid McD's, this must also not represent all of those that don't eat fast food in the first place, or that only have McD in their vicinity. thus the number of people who don't use it must be huge. of course Marlboro is extremely american, aaahh the advertising and the fact that Phillip Morris gets to advertize in europe and asia.

In contrast to Visa's performance, 48 percent of boycotting consumers said they would definitely avoid using American Express; 64 percent said they thought the company was "extremely American," and only two percent reported using it during the previous month. Other problem brands included Exxon-Mobil, AOL, American, Chevron Texaco, United Airlines, Budweiser, Chrysler, Barbie Doll, Starbucks, and General Motors.
Barbie Doll? really??? cool. hehehe. the world doesn't like fake reality? hehehe. i am curious about chrysler? in that it is now a major partner of Daimler-Benz and thus inextricably linked to europe in so many way. and hell, citizens of the US don't like the two largest oil companies in the world either. AOL tried to ram its way into europe, when it was owned by one of the US's most infamous pornographers.

The latest poll found that more than two thirds of European and Canadian consumers have had a negative change in their view of the United States as a result of U.S. foreign policy over the last three years. Nearly half believe that the war in Iraq was motivated by a desire to control oil supplies, while only 15 percent believed it was related to terrorism.
wow, nearly half of the people actually know what is real. that is hugely reassuring, at least in terms of validating what some of us know to be true. there is something scary that more euros know that terrorism is phony than do those who actually voted for kerry. this is not good.

Nearly two thirds of European and Canadian consumers also said they believe U.S. foreign policy is guided primarily by self-interest and empire-building, while only 17 percent believe that the defense of freedom and democracy is its guiding principle. Half of the entire sample said they distrusted U.S. companies, at least in part because of the U.S. foreign policy. Seventy-nine percent said they distrusted the U.S. government for the same reason, while 39 percent said they distrusted the American public.
this last fact is alarming in the sense that the results of the election should indicate that at least one-sixth of the US population is frightfully scary just by voting for Bush, and that the other third supports these policies and are the most vile and nefarious of anti-euro fascists.

Fully 87 percent of German, 84 percent of French, and 71 percent of British respondents have negative feelings toward Bush himself. Moreover, British, French and German consumers all felt that the cultural values of the other two countries were closer to their own than "American values."