Agency Millward Brown and media company WPP have recently looked into Chinese branding and consumer opinions. Looking at the 50 most valuable Chinese brands, they found that 83% of consumers outside of China couldn’t name a single Chinese brand or company.
China, of course, wants to create a global present, as Adrian Gonzalez, the head of Greater China at Millward Brown, explained. Chinese brands clearly need to do much more work to become distinguishable in the competitive marketplace internationally.
In China, however, the brand study found that, of the 35,000 consumers, Chinese brand value has grown to US$325 billion in the last year. This is a 16% increase from the previous year.
Gonzalez said that today, “We’re seeing in many cases now that foreign companies feel the best way to succeed in China now is through acquiring a Chinese company.” He pointed out that this was not the case previously.
The study also showed a significant change in the use of state-owned enterprises, as the study showed that “Government protectionism is starting to wear thin.” This is a dramatic contrast to the findings in the 2010 study. Half of the brands that were on the list that were less favorable with consumers were state-owned.