EU customers boycotting US and UK goods over Iraq

Date: 24/04/03

By Peter Chapman

The eurozone's two biggest economies are shunning US and UK goods and services because of their invasion of Iraq, a report by consultancy Weber Shandwick reveals.

But the report shows that citizens in France and Germany - the key members of what US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dubbed 'Old Europe' - are less likely to vent their anger at the cash-till than American counterparts.

Some 17 of French customers polled said they were less likely to 'buy American', with 11 less likely to buy British products, as a result of the action in Iraq. Just 1 said they were more likely to buy products from the US or UK.

In Germany consumers were, on balance, less worried about the origin of goods. Although 13 said they were giving US goods the cold shoulder, 9 said they were more likely to buy them.

Quizzed on British goods, 10 of the Germans said they were less likely to buy, but 7 said the opposite.

The Weber Shandwick report found that 11 of customers in the UK were also turning their backs on US goods, despite the British Army's key role in the coalition that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime. In contrast only 4 said they were now more likely to buy American.

A survey of US consumers published earlier this month by consultancy Fleishman-Hillard International and research company Wirthlin showed that many more American customers are likely to link their purchases to differences in government policy over Iraq.

It showed that 64 of Americans are "much" or "somewhat" less favourable toward French companies and their products than before the current tensions began. Nearly a third said they would boycott or avoid French imports.

More than half of those surveyed said they were much or somewhat less favourable to German products.

The eurozone's two biggest economies, France and Germany, are shunning US and UK goods and services because of their invasion of Iraq, a report by consultancy Weber Shandwick reveals.