Monday, July 25, 2011

Japan brands continue to dominate Asian consumer loyalty - Tom Doctoroff

Tom Doctoroff
Japan brands will dominate consumer loyalty in Asia, while China brands will offer them competition only in the long run, although they are learning fast, says JWT's North Asia CEO Tom Doctoroff in CNBC.

CNBC:
“Japanese brands are built on scale, heritage, product differentiation and significant (advertising) spending,” said Tom Doctoroff, North Asia CEO at J. Walter Thompson (JWT), who points out that much of the creative, brand building responsibilities for Japanese consumer firms have been outsourced to multinational agencies.

Doctoroff believes the country’s brands will continue to dominate consumer loyalty in Asia going forward, particularly because Japanese companies are ramping up their focus on international expansion...

“There is absolutely no Chinese brand right now that is actively preferred to Western or Japanese brands,” Doctoroff said.

However, he added that mainland consumer firms are beginning to understand the importance of image...

One such push by Chinese consumer firms to increase brand recognition is via product placement. The recently released Hollywood movie, Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon, featured products from mainland names including PC-makerLenovo, flat-screen television manufacturer TCL and leading dairy products firm Yili.

This may be one small step in the right direction, but Doctoroff points out they still have a long way to go.

“The real barrier is the structure of Chinese organizations and their focus on short-term sales versus long term growth. Chinese CEOs are not solely motivated by gains in shareholder value, they have one eye focused on the market and the other one on political motivations,” he concluded.
More about Japan's brand names in CNBC.

Tom Doctoroff is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brand name builds on quality.

Quality is what consumers look for. Quality comes from long term focus on making something almost PERFECT and LAST. Chinese mentality does not work that way.

Neither is the politicians in China work on long term strategies either. At least not at this point.

Chinese look for quick bucks. A typical strains of a gambler. And Chinese are great gambler.

Japanese on the other hand would take times to even just to drink a cup of tea! They look for perfections. In everything. The same token, the German or nations around this region work the same way. That is the reason why products take much longer to the market ... perfection and quality are focus.

America is another 'quick buck' nation. Fortunately American is NOT homogeneous such as China. Taiwan although is almost 100% Chinese but 40 or more years of Japanese occupation rubbed lots of Japanese doctrine on to the people.

To understand a product, first understand the people, the cultures of a nation. Most of the time one is not too far wrong.

Cindy

Anonymous said...

In any under taking, I always think of the project management triangle : time, resources and quality. We strikes for perfect triangle of 90 degrees. Seldom achieved. But one has to think of what to give away, and what is the ultimate goal.

When building a brand, quality is then the focus. To achieve quality, resources cannot be given away. Therefore the only option is time. Time costs money ....

Is all very easy to say. But we all have to make choices. Especially in the technological market, speed seems to be the boss. But if speed becomes dominant, then quality or resources would become problems. Therefore which one to give? For anyone focuses on short term gains, quality is the least important. But then eventually quality is the one that costs the most money.

Cindy