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Hong Kong

Hong Kong Trend: Flag foreign food - literally

By thomascrampton ⋅ January 7, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Some Melamine-era marketing I noticed today in Park n’ Shop: Foreign brands have quite literally been flagged.

All these flags were photographed near the check out (mainly a candy section).

Recently heard you can tell the country of origin from those numbers in the Bar Code.

Is it true? Anyone know how to do that?

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Comments for “Hong Kong Trend: Flag foreign food - literally”

  • I totally attribute it to the food scares.

    It would be interesting to know the price difference between imported biscuits and the Chinese-made(?) ones.

    We could call the difference in price a security premium that consumers are willing to make. Will they be willing to pay that premium as the economy slows down?
  • mike
    I am not sure about food scares; I thought it was a simple branding strategy. May be wrong though.

    Interesting is how they have this system for the same brands. For example, Tim Tam biscuits. They still have the standard packet (unmarked) and the imported version of the same packet (marked as import and much more expensive). Is the import sign to explain/justify the higher price (could also link in to the food scare, I guess).
  • +1! Add your blog in my bookmarks, Disqus is an interesting plugin to add comments!
  • The first 3 numbers on the barcode represent the country of origin in the EAN system and not in the UPC system (most common in the US). Not sure what is being used in Asia though...

    These are the country code for EAN:
    http://www.adams1.com/upccode.html#countrycode

    BTW, Tom - Congrats on installing outbrain on your blog!

    Amit
  • Ray
    Happy New Year, Tom!:)

    About your barcode question, I did a research before.

    If I do not remember wrongly, a barcode (if they are standard ones, they should be issued by GS-1) has different sections indicating different information, including the origin of the registered producer, the company, the category of good and a number issued by the company who owns the barcode. As you can see, it only reveals the origin of the registered producer, it is not necessary related to where the product is from. For example, a perfume which is made in China but issued by Chanel, it will contain a barcode with something related to France but not China.

    More info can be found here: http://www.gs1.org/productssolutions/barcodes/
  • @Dan
    Yes, you are right, they always did it for "Australian Apples" and "French Broccholi".

    Perhaps from fear over insecticides and pesticides?

    As you say, the melamine-era aspect is to expand it to candy and other products.
  • Dan
    This has been a standard in the produce section for as long as I've been going to HK, interesting that it's been extended to candy though :)
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Thomas Crampton was a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times for more than a decade, reporting from five continents, writing a column on Asia and covering Asian politics, economics and culture. Currently based in Hong Kong, he writes here about China, the Internet and New Media seen from Asia, while also advising companies on digital communication strategies. For more information click here...