Well, about you I can't judge from here but about Bulgarians and other post-socialist people I can provide some clues:

-Not so small parts of the population are convinced they are being cheated and ripped off by "the system"(according to some political scientists a trait of the homo post-sovieticus). The system can be the government, the Russians, the Americans, the international capitalists' money, the mafia etc. Whatever you need it to be, but basically along the lines of "There's a big conspiration and it is about to f*** me!"
-I know people that still (anno 2012) prefer to go by bus from Germany to Bulgaria because on the plain they can't take like 40kg of Persil laundry detergent. They are simply convinced we're getting second hand quality.
-I know a collegue who studied chemistry and now works in the Beiersdorf factory in Poznan, Poland (They produce Nivea and tons of other stuff). He swore to me by the life of his unborn child that they apply the absolute same technology and standards to all markets. 
-Last year the Slovak Consumer Protection Organisation came up with a study that supposedly proved the lower quality of a number of products (I just remember Kotanyi spices) for Eastern Europe. Most accused companies  heavily denied this gave out data supposedly proving the above to be false. 

As you can see it's quite confusing. My opinion is that there are companies shipping off their lower quality products to poorer markets, but it's not the general rule. Moreover now with the EU we do have very similar legislation and it would be quite the hassle to change ingredients in an automated process. 

Otherwise having first and second hand quality products of the same brand is not that unusual. In Libya I remember they had Marlboro cigarettes produced in Tunisia and in Egypt. The former cost twice as much, since they were apparently better.