Nike Inc seemed to have experienced no harm to its brand name despite basketball superstar Michael Jordan's controversial fleeting endorsment appearance in May, a Chinese-language business monthly reported yesterday, saying that Nike remains the No. 1 sports brand among local consumers.
Given its strong brand image and reputation, Nike led the nation's sports shoe segment with an overwhelming share of 61.4 percent, leaving Adidas, which took second place with only 10.1 percent, far behind, according to a "share of mind" survey.
The annual survey polled 1,153 people between 25 and 65 years of age across the nation between Oct. 1 and Nov. 30.
"The result showed that Nike enjoyed significantly high consumer brand loyalty, which the company has cultivated through successful branding," Horng Shun-ching (洪順慶), a professor in marketing at National Chengchi University, said at a press conference yesterday.
This showed the importance of brand build-up, the pundit said.
The survey of the top brands occupying consumers' minds was first conducted 20 years ago. This year, the survey covered brands in 103 industries, including services, food, home appliances and high-tech products.
"Consumers usually do not purchase brands they hardly know or remember," said Frank Hung (
A ranking of brands according to customers' intuitional respon-ses gives insight into each brand's position in consumers' minds, Hung said.
Starbucks, for instance, led the coffee-chains section as the No. 1 ideal brand with an unrivaled 58 percent, leaving its competitors, Barista Coffee with 5.1 percent and IS Coffee with 4.3 percent, lagging far behind.
IBM took 22.5 percent of support as the nation's most ideal laptop brand, followed by Asus with 21.6 percent and Acer with 18.6 percent, the survey showed.
However, Big Blue's sale of its personal-computer unit to China's Lenovo Group last month is said to be likely to cast a shadow on its brand image, which in turn may decrease its brand value.
"Brand cannot be separated from quality," Horng said, adding that its especially the case where quality is a brand's core strength.
As people still hold the rigid perception that China is not competent enough to manufacture high-end products, "the US IBM and the Chinese IBM mean totally different things to consumers," he said.
This speculation on the part of the public is likely to erode IBM's brand value, Horng said.
IBM is the world's third most valuable brand with its brand value assessed at US$53.79 billion this year, after Coca Cola's US$67.39 billion and Microsoft's US$61.37 billion, according to figures by international brand-consultancy firm Interbrand Corp.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained