Economic patriotism distinguishes Poland in Europe
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Polish consumers prefer products manufactured domestically. However, interest in imported goods has been growing over the years. Such a main conclusion can be drawn on the basis of the recently published "Buy Locally Index" report by the consulting company Grant Thornton. Its authors decided to measure how often Poles choose domestic products and how we compare with other large EU economies in this respect.
Main result: only the Spaniards are bigger patriots than us. Because they have a very low share of imports of final goods in domestic consumption with relatively low self-sufficiency of their economy.
Grant Thornton considered these two variables first. The share of imported goods in Polish consumption is about 18.9 percent, and the self-sufficiency index – Economic Complexity Index, taken from the Growth Lab research at Harvard University – is 1.1 points. For Spain, it is 0.83 points, which puts it in the last place among the ten largest economies in the EU in this respect.
Treating the leader's result as a reference point, Grant Thornton calculated that in the case of Poland, the so-called Buy Locally Index is 70.1 points. Behind us were such countries as the Netherlands and France, and Germany was the worst with an index of 30.9 points.
"Of course, people in their choices are primarily guided by the value for money of the products they buy. But the issue of origin also matters, as evidenced by all campaigns financed by Polish business, emphasizing the Polishness of their products," Tomasz Wróblewski, managing partner of Grant Thornton, said.
The authors of the report were primarily guided by the place where the product was made, so goods sold under foreign brands, but manufactured in Poland, were also considered to be Polish goods.
