Forum: Companies must increase investment in branding

Chinese companies should increase investment in their branding to have more influence on the international stage, delegates at an industry forum were told on Thursday.

Among the hundreds of thousands of Chinese brands, very few have become genuinely global, and big enough to overtake their Western counterparts, Wang Tongsan, an economist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank, told the China Brand Forum held in Beijing in his keynote speech.

"It's a national strategy and economically important that our leading Chinese names continue to appreciate in terms of brand value, raise their level of recognition, and further boost their global influence," he said.

The event is the country's first to focus purely on branding, and organizers are hoping it will become an influential industry platform in the future for the country's top domestic brands and experts in the field to help companies deal with the challenges of brand building, said Liu Shijin, vice-president of the Development Research Center under the State Council.

Liu said successful brand building would not only lead to rising revenues and increased customer loyalty, but also help the country move up the global value chain.

Edward Kingson, director of brand culture at Hongdou Group Co Ltd, a leading garments, textiles and accessories producer, said investing wisely in brand value fits well with the country's overall "going global" strategy, and some progress has been made.

"Compared with the past, when Chinese consumers focused on the price of what they bought, they are now attaching more significance to branding and quality," he said.

"The ever-improving laws and regulations are also providing domestic brands with a better business environment in which to focus on technical innovation while investing in their brand value."

Wang said China, still among the world leaders in manufacturing and exports, is largely being left behind, however, in its level of international brand recognition worldwide, because there is a lack of awareness of what makes a brand successful overseas. The scarcity of world-renowned Chinese products, despite the massive resources, energy and environmental sacrifices being made to develop the country's top names, has meant many have failed to achieve the profits they could have compared with their Western counterparts, Wang said, because they have failed to invest better in their branding.

"Chinese brands should be playing more of a core role in world competition. The government should come up with more favorable policies to help forge an upgraded type of brand image for companies, while the firms should invest more in their brand values," said Wang.