No Chinese brand can compete at a premium price - Tom Doctoroff

Tom Doctoroff
by Fons1 via FlickrNo local brand can compete at a premium prices in America, Europe and Japan, says Tom Doctoroff in the Huffington Post. Doctoroff, CEO, Greater China, of J. Walter Thompson, has a wide-ranging look at the China-branding trends hit by the milk melamine scandal, pushed by the Beijing Olympics, growth areas like services and the online trends.
But on the capacities of domestic brands and their chances of going global, Doctoroff is pessimistic:

There are many local brands that boast strong distribution in emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. However, with the exception of Lenovo (which acquired the IBM ThinkPad brand), there is not one local brand equipped to compete at a price premium in the developed markets of America, Europe and Japan. Their brand equity is not robust enough and the structure of their organization is too sales-driven. This will not change for many years and the first brands to break through will be mid-sized, relatively non-bureaucratic entities such as Anta and Lining shoes, rather than lumbering state-owned behemoths.

More at the Huffington Post.

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Tom Doctoroff is one of the leading speakers at the China Speakers Bureau. If you want to have him as a speaker, do get in touch.

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