1. In the internationalization strategy, brand internationalization is a threshold that domestic enterprises cannot bypass. In today's increasingly globalized world, "Made in China" should not only be synonymous with low prices and rough quality, nor should it be a symbol of "sweatshops" where low-cost labor gathers. What is an international brand? To be realistic, for Chinese domestic enterprises, they are just looking for an image to increase the value of their products in the international market. The product is still the same product, and changing the brand is very likely to double the value.
2. In fact, we are surrounded by a variety of international brands, which represent unified quality, global services and continuous technological innovation. In a sense, a brand is a commitment to the value of a product. Today, as domestic enterprises become increasingly globalized, the creation of international brands is an urgent matter. At present, many companies are exploring and trying, hoping to find a more effective path for their own companies.
3. Three paths for brand internationalization:
After acquiring the German white goods brand Schneider, TCL Group indirectly acquired the American company Govedio. TCL plans to use the Schneider brand for sales in the European market and the Govedio brand for the U.S. market. In addition to TCL's own brands and the recently acquired Leroy brand, TCL already has four brands: TCL, Leroy, Schneider and Govedio. TCL's brand strategy is very clear, that is, it actively develops multi-brand market strategies targeting different marketing regions and different levels of consumer structures in domestic and international markets.
"Schneider" is a long-standing and powerful brand in Germany. When the company needed to be liquidated due to financial problems, TCL seized the opportunity to acquire its assets and brand. TCL produces and sells products under the "TCL" brand in Vietnam, while in Germany it continues to use the "Schneider" brand and still uses Schneider's original sales channels. The Schneider brand can also bring TCL into Europe's communications, information and other fields, which is obviously much faster than re-promoting their own brand there.
When TCL chose to acquire local brands in the international market for operation, Haier chose another brand strategy and launched a unified private brand "Haier" around the world. Haier CEO Zhang Ruimin explains its international brand strategy this way: "Acquiring a world-famous brand or a regional brand will save a little effort for Haier, but what is the final result? That is, part of the acquisition fee paid by Haier Basically, they are all intangible assets, and few are tangible. In the end, Haier is still making other people's brands and cannot establish its own brand at all. "In Haier's future territory, the unified brand "Haier" will be launched around the world. own brand, and build a powerful global empire of Haier on this basis.
When it comes to establishing production bases overseas, especially investing in and building factories in developed countries such as the United States, most people think of risks, but Zhang Ruimin has a different view. He believes that the risk of setting up a factory in the United States is a risk in the process of creating a world-famous brand. "It is a risk in seeking development opportunities. By bypassing this risk, we can succeed and gain new experience, allowing us to continue to grow. It seems that After a nirvana. But the risk of not setting up a factory in the United States is a certain risk, that is, you can't go out and you can never grow up."
Some people say that due to cost considerations, Americans are setting up factories in China. Why should Haier go to the United States? Zhang Ruimin believes that Haier's purpose of going global is the same as the purpose of those multinational companies "coming in", which is to create a world-famous brand. The difference is that the purpose of multinational companies coming to China is to improve their global brand system from the perspective of global strategic layout. Haier set up a factory in the United States to create its own brand system. Zhang Ruimin believes that if Haier does not establish its own brand overseas, Haier will eventually have to stay at the stage of OEM for foreign brands and work for foreign brands to survive. What exactly does it take to establish an international brand? What is needed is international influence.
Therefore, compared with multinational companies, Haier's road to overseas brand creation is destined to face more ups and downs.
Galanz has chosen a different strategy from Haier and TCL in terms of international brand operation. "It does not force the GALANZ brand in overseas markets, but focuses on Galanz manufacturing." This is the best interpretation of Galanz’s international brand strategy. This model is exactly the same as Taiwan's manufacturing companies - making manufacturing profits in the form of OEM. Galanz's corporate positioning is to be a manufacturing center for global famous brand home appliances and to serve as OEM for internationally renowned brands, which is a reflection of this positioning. Galanz’s strategy also includes antitrust considerations. They had suffered this kind of loss in Argentina. When the local market share of Galanz's own brand exceeded 70%, they encountered antitrust issues. As a result, they had to give up the business they had spent four to five years building. For this reason, Galanz decided to reduce the share of its own brands in foreign countries and use OEM to increase product share to occupy the market. Galanz's advantages mainly focus on manufacturing costs, but the cost advantage cannot bring it subsequent driving force for sustainable development. In the next few years, Galanz's international brand strategy will be to combine self-operated brands with OEM, and use the brand, sales and service network and other resources of internationally renowned companies to successfully enter the international market for its products. In this way, Galanz can not only cleverly avoid risks such as market development and fixed asset investment, and win a certain profit margin, but also achieve low-cost expansion in the global market.
4. The ultimate realization of international brands
For domestic companies, whether Haier, TCL or Galanz, the biggest challenge is how to survive in an unfamiliar environment surrounded by powerful enemies. In the market environment, quickly establish your own brand. After all, they have only existed for more than ten years, and their overseas development has only happened in recent years. Compared with century-old stores such as GE, Whirlpool, and Siemens, it is obviously difficult to tell their brand value to overseas consumers. In fact, Japanese and Korean companies such as Toyota, Sony and Samsung have also experienced such problems. In the end, they established a strong brand position on a global scale.
From the perspective of the development trend of internationalization of multinational companies, establishing a unified global brand is the brand path of SONY, Siemens, Panasonic and other companies. Relatively speaking, fast-moving consumer goods and daily chemical products are suitable for adopting a "multi-brand" strategy. One fundamental reason is that the life cycles of these product categories themselves are short. For durable consumer goods such as household appliances, the product life cycle is very long and is more suitable for a single brand (comprehensive brand) strategy. Judging from the brand application practice in the global home appliance industry, multinational companies rarely adopt the "multi-brand" strategy. For example, LG, SANYO, and SHARP's refrigerators, air conditioners, fax machines, washing machines, color TVs, etc. all use the same brand. At the same time, consumers' trust in household appliance brands such as washing machines, color TVs, and stereos can all be attributed to one common point, that is, recognition of the technology and quality of this unique brand. In other words, it is most important for a brand to be accepted by consumers in terms of technology and quality. Last year, Emerson, a world-famous home appliance brand, cut off one-third of its dozens of original brands, while Panasonic chose a single comprehensive brand, Panasonic, after implementing a dual-brand strategy for many years.
5. The reason for brand concentration is that the two brands Anasonic and National often confuse users' concepts, making consumers confused about their relationship with Panasonic, which greatly disperses brand resources and is not conducive to enhancing its overall competitiveness. Therefore, Panasonic decided to use Panasonic as a unified brand trademark in global overseas markets. Electrolux, one of the leading companies in the global home appliance industry, has recently accelerated its brand concentration strategy. Electrolux has acquired more than 400 companies around the world and has about 22 brands. However, it only has one brand in the Asian market and does not implement a multi-brand strategy. Electrolux's multiple brands have historical reasons. The European market in the 1930s was already very mature. If Electrolux wanted to expand its strength, it had to acquire some well-known companies in the market. The acquired brands would be well-known. It is very high and needs to be preserved.
Nowadays, Electrolux has too many brands in Europe, which will weaken the status of mainstream brands in the hearts of consumers.
Judging from these examples of transformation from multi-brand strategies to single comprehensive brand strategies, comprehensive brands have irresistible charm: they can save a lot of advertising costs; they can help concentrate all resources to build a big brand ; Enhance the reputation, popularity and association of the comprehensive brand, making the company appear more focused and professional; the market situation of a single product under the comprehensive brand will feed back the market situation of other products.
The operating methods used by brands such as Whirlpool and SIMENS to enter some emerging markets are very similar to TCL. For example, after SIMENS entered the Chinese market, it first acquired Yangzi refrigerators, and then continued to use the "Yangzi" brand for a period of time. When the Yangzi brand route became narrower and narrower, SIMENS launched its own brand grandly. The essence of this multi-brand strategy is to first implement "transnational brand localization" and then gradually move toward "transnational brand globalization."
6. The current strategy adopted by TCL should be such a path: the short-term "multi-brand strategy" is just a transition, which can allow TCL to enter the market of developed countries in the short term, with " The effect of "low-cost operating brand". It can avoid market access, reduce tax burden, shorten the distance with local consumers, etc. However, with the passage of time and the need for market development, in order to be consistent with TCL's market goal of "globalizing multinational brands", TCL should still adopt a single brand. It is certain that Leroy, Schneider, and Govedio will continue to exist in the future. TCL can use these brands to enter some specific markets and channels at low cost without additional investment, and can obtain more in the short term. interests.
Ganz’s current brand strategy in the international market is the OEM strategy, which has a lot to do with Galanz’s own situation and Galanz’s brand strategy. But what is certain is that this is also a transitional brand strategy. This strategy is also undergoing subtle changes at Galanz. It is gradually moving from a single OEM strategy to a combination of OEM and private brand strategies.
In terms of international brand operation, Haier represents the future direction of domestic enterprises - building a global brand from the beginning. When it comes to Chinese products, the impression of cheap prices and inferior quality is deeply imprinted in the minds of Europeans and Americans, just like what happened to Japanese products in the United States in the past. In order to obtain appropriate price points for their products, Haier must continuously improve product quality, which will help them improve their brand image overseas. Therefore, Haier started by establishing brand awareness from the beginning, and its experimental fields were in developed countries in Europe and the United States to establish its own unified comprehensive brand, with a high starting point. This actually means that it is difficult to receive returns in the short term.
The current international brand strategies of domestic enterprises, whether they are "saving the country through curves" or taking "shortcuts", are closely linked to their overall internationalization strategies. The establishment of a strong international brand is supported by strong R&D, manufacturing and market operation capabilities. The final international brand comes from truly internationally competitive enterprises.
7. Brand internationalization refers to the efforts to make the brand known as an international brand, that is, a brand with greater influence in the world.
8. International brands generally have the following three characteristics:
1) Brands have a long history, and some have a history of decades or even hundreds of years in their own country;
2) Often lead the development direction of the industry;
3) Have experts, masters or teams that support the brand.
9. There are two common methods of brand internationalization:
One is to produce domestically but the products are sold abroad;
The other is to set up branches abroad. company to achieve all-round expansion.
The second method is most commonly used by world-famous large companies. Some well-known multinational companies even have no production capacity themselves and pass it on to some foreign companies with very low local production costs. This way it can still enjoy most of the benefits of its own brand. This is the case with Nike.
However, the difficulties will be huge if you want to build a brand on a global scale. Every competitor, especially its own competitors, will be highly sensitive to foreign invaders. In addition, there are great differences in language, beliefs, life and consumption habits between different countries, and the characteristics and prices of products will also be very different, which increases the difficulty of brand internationalization.
Therefore, the brand must be integrated with the specific local conditions, that is, localized. Building a brand without considering the consumption behavior characteristics of local consumers may have a negative impact. Nokia does a better job in this regard. Its products are always changing to adapt to the needs of Chinese consumers. In the business strategy of multinational companies, localization of product production and marketing is a feature. Utilizing the halo effect of famous brands to produce similar products in overseas subsidiaries and utilizing local cheap labor resources, costs will be greatly reduced and product competitiveness will be further strengthened.
10. A brand cannot be built in one go. It requires a solid brand structure and platform. As long as we are not afraid of failure and insist on taking the road of independent brands, I believe that China will soon have world-class independent brands.
The author Chen Yizhen is the founder of Weihan Global Marketing Agency and is currently the director of Dahe China Media Co., Ltd. Born in Hong Kong and graduated from the University of Wisconsin in the United States, he has more than 20 years of advertising experience. He is a pioneer of Gray China, a judge of the Effie Awards in the United States, deputy director of the Company Committee of the China Advertising Association, and chairman of the Hong Kong Advertisers Association.