Anchor: Chinese brands are gaining global power. This is the conclusion of a recent survey which ranks China’s biggest wireless telecoms operator, China Mobile, the world’s fourth most powerful brand. China Mobile beats many famous international brands in the listing, including Google and IBM. Our business reporter Tu Yun finds out what has contributed to China Mobile’s high value.
Reporter:The ranking, called BRANDZ Top 100 Most Powerful Brands, was developed by Optimor, the global brand consulting arm of world leading marketing research firm Millward Brown. China Mobile’s brand value is estimated to be over 39 billion US dollars. It follows Microsoft, General Electrics and Coca-Cola to rank fourth on the chart. It is also apparently the first time a Chinese brand has been listed on a world brand ranking. Zhang Yixin is the director of Millward Brown Optimor in Asia Pacific. “There are no Chinese brands included in other similar global rankings of top 100 most powerful brands because those rankings exclude Chinese firms when choosing candidates in the first place.” Zhang Yixin says those rankings do so because they think Chinese firms are not internationalized enough.
“That's actually a misunderstanding. But we still don’t take this into account when picking our candidate brands because we firmly believe the Chinese market makes up a very big proportion of the world market. If China is excluded, the ranking cannot be dubbed as global.” Optimor says their ranking is unique because it’s the first one to combine consumer research with public financial data to measure the contributions brands make to a company’s performance. Additionally, it’s said to be the only ranking to quantify consumer sentiment about a brand’s momentum and future prospects. “We conducted a survey of hundreds of consumers in major Chinese markets including Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu. They told us how our candidate brands affected their purchases and their responses were quantified and integrated into our evaluation. Our survey included 650 thousand global consumers. ”
Taking China’s large population into account, China Mobile can surely be seen as having a huge influence among consumers and thus has great business potential. Shares of China Mobile have surged 12 percent on the Hong Kong stock exchange since the firm announced a 28 percent increase in annual profits last month. It has gained continuously over the past two days ending at 42.35 Hong Kong dollars on Tuesday and is currently up more than 70 percent over the past 12 months. Apart from Chinese brands gaining global power, the ranking also shows Europe leading the world in luxury brands, and that retail brands are becoming a more important factor in driving consumer shopping behavior. For China Drive, I’m Tu Yun.
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own. China Mobile’s brand value is estimated to be over 39 billion US dollars. It follows Microsoft, General Electrics and Coca-Cola to rank fourth on the chart. It is also apparently the first time a Chinese brand has been listed on a world brand ranking. Zhang Yixin is the director of Millward Brown Optimor in Asia Pacific. “There are no Chinese brands included in other similar global rankings of top 100 most powerful brands because those rankings exclude Chinese firms when choosing candidates in the first place.” Zhang Yixin says those rankings do so because they think Chinese firms are not internationalized enough.
