Apple, meanwhile, remains a hugely popular American company. More than three-quarters of respondents said they had a very favorable or mostly favorable opinion of Apple.
The Times poll found that most Americans considered it very important to buy American-made products.
Over all, 52 percent of the public said it was very important that the products they buy were made in the United States; only 42 percent of owners of Apple products agreed.
Outsourcing, they say, is clearly a cause of fewer jobs domestically. And two-thirds of the public wants American companies to shoulder a lot of responsibility to keep manufacturing jobs in the United States.
“Things would be more expensive if they were made here, and companies want to cut costs. Everything seems to be about money,” said Dannie Gilchrist of Oskaloosa, Iowa, in a follow-up interview. “I would be willing to pay more for items manufactured here,” he added, volunteering that he owned an iPad. “I think if people knew products were made entirely overseas they wouldn’t buy as much of them.”
Owners of Apple products were largely aware that Apple products had a large foreign manufacturing component. Most, 54 percent, said they were made partly in the United States and partly overseas, 18 percent said entirely overseas, 8 percent said entirely in the United States and 20 percent said they did not know.
“I had no idea where they are made. But 90 percent of the products we have in America are made overseas,” Mariann Bellville of Haverhill, Mass., said. “We don’t like it, but we don’t have a heck of a choice. You can’t get a coffee pot made totally in this country.”
The poll, conducted Nov. 18-21, interviewed 951 adults using both landlines and cellphones. Percentages for all adults have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points; for owners of Apple devices it is plus or minus five percentage points.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=cdc7a197b3059f32315f2ab6687ae248
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.