Foreign students may love the latest gadgets and hottest fashions, but they don’t necessarily know where their favorite brands actually come from, according to an online survey of 1,000 US college student by market research firm Anderson Analytics.

Fifty three percent of students thought Finnish cell phone company Nokia to be Japanese, while 57.8% thought Korean electronics company Samsung was Japanese.

Cell phones shot to the top of the most misidentified country of origin category. Although Nokia has dominated the cell phone market, just 4.4% of students knew that Nokia was made in Finland; and just 8.9% knew LG cell phones came from Korea.

Even strong American brands like Motorola are falsely believed to be Japanese, probably because the name sounds Japanese. Forty two percent of students surveyed thought Motorola was Japanese compared to 37.9% who said it was American.

While brand ignorance is bliss for most products, country of origin plays an important part in making luxury goods and automobiles more exclusive and exotic.

French Hermes scored higher with students who correctly identified it as a French rather than a UK brand with 23% more giving it high ratings. Similarly, fewer students (a 13.3% difference) gave Japanese Lexus top ratings when they mistakenly thought it was a US-made car.

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. It probably is! [Source: EBT]