| Abstract: | The Australian Federal Government introduced in 1994 the Trade Practices Amendment (Origin Labelling) Bill in the House of Representatives, Parliament of Australia, to establish a scheme to govern representations about the origin of consumer goods. This amendment to the Trade Practices Act (1974) applies only to Australian products, and provides two labelling alternatives, that is Product of Australia (no imported components and processing has been done completely in Australia) and Made in Australia (with some imported components). The Origin Labelling Bill 1994 is currently pending in the Senate, Parliament of Australia, for various reasons.Apart from the investigation into legal matters, a major aim of the research to be reported here was to question the impact of country of origin on the consumers' buying decision process, and in particular the impact of the Australian Made logo on sales of consumer goods. This logo is provided by the Advance Australia Foundation as a part of the Buy Australian Made campaign, started in 1986 to reduce the Australian import penetration.A Townsville-based consumer survey, conducted as a part of the research, showed that price, quality, and value for money were the over-riding factors in purchasing decisions. The survey sampled 647 interviewed consumers, and included an experiment in which business shirts and tea bags were used to determine reactions to country of manufacture information. It was found, for example, that the addition of a logo to a shirt had no positive influence on the Australian shirt's propensity to be selected as the preferred shirt when compared to the imported shirts. |
