Raneem Nasser, a housewife, is reluctant to purchase Jordanian-manufactured products. “Foreign ones last a longer time,” she told Al-Monitor while shopping for household goods at SmartBuy in downtown Amman. Nasser is far from being the only member of her generation who prefers foreign appliances to household hardware made in Jordan, but an ambitious campaign aimed at younger generations hopes to counter this attitude and instill pride in locally produced goods.

Musa al-Saket, a board member of the Amman Chamber of Industry, told Al-Monitor that the lack of confidence in Jordanian-made products and the general assumption that foreign goods are of better quality dates to the opening of the Jordanian market to imports in the 2000s.

“As the Jordanian market was a closed market [until the 2000s], Jordanian products were not subject to market competition with products from abroad. This lack of competition was not conducive to innovation,” Saket said. “When the Jordanian government opened the market after signing free trade agreements in the 2000s, only two options were available: either upgrade Jordanian products to be more competitive or shut down local factories.”

While the country’s business elite opted for the former, it was no easy task to get local consumers to choose Jordanian products over the available foreign imports. That is why the “Made in Jordan” campaign was launched in 2013.