A social media campaign dubbed “Made in Iran” has recently gone viral among Iranian internet users in which they are asked to share the names of five top domestic commodities and services as well as five low quality products in order to weigh the pros and cons of local products. Unlike similar campaigns in the past, “Made in Iran” is a voluntary move by people, and managers of the public or private companies do not play a role in its creation.
“The idea of initiating this campaign popped up into my mind when I bought the Iranian version of a product I was using for a long time. Surprisingly, the price of the homemade item was one fifth of the foreign product and its quality was almost the same,” said Amirhadi Anvari, journalist and the initiator of “Made in Iran” campaign, IRNA reported.
“Up until now, female users have picked personal care products and cosmetics as the best Iranian products and male users have viewed foods as the highest-quality Iranian products. On the low-quality items list, the products of automotive companies and mobile phone operators are sitting on top,” Anvari said.
The past years’ threadbare slogan of “Iranians! Buy Iranian!” which aimed at supporting domestic products did not cut much ice with people. Production of low quality goods, opening the country’s floodgates to imports, lack of competitiveness of domestic products in the face of foreign brands and exaggerated advertisements have all offset the effects of such slogans and have dented customers’ trust in local goods. This is while, there are local products on the market which enjoy the same quality, if not better, when compared to foreign products but have failed to attract attention.
Despite the fact that increase in local production is a contributor to job creation, lack of modern technology can result in making of subpar goods. Consequently, it is natural that customers do not welcome such products. This comes as a group of experts believe it is both logical and economical to import certain goods when the country lacks the know-how of producing them.
Economist Bayazid Mardoukhi believes that one of the main challenges of domestic production is monopoly and exit from it is no easy task.
“The only way to break monopolies is to add to the number of local and foreign companies. The owners of businesses should be given an ultimatum to upgrade their products, if they fail, whatever support should be discontinued as no economy needs costly, subpar products,” he said.
