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.
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.
Interestingly Made in Japan was considered cheap labour until Sony changed that perception.<p>See this article from 1978:
<a href="http://people.com/archive/made-in-japan-once-was-a-joke-akio-morita-of-sony-changed-all-that-vol-9-no-23/" rel="nofollow">http://people.com/archive/made-in-japan-once-was-a-joke-akio...</a>
>The index is calculated using the average weighted share of positive assessments reached by each country.<p>From their methodology page. I would argue that there is just as much information in the other end of the scale.<p>For instance, China is extremely respected, iPhone, and not, low cost electronics, at the same time.<p>Maybe a country with no positive but also no negative associations would be more desirable than one with split positive and negative ratings.<p>Would be nice to be able to browse the raw data.
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).
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.