Samsung`s brand value ranks 6th worldwide

In 1980, Korea exported 5.14 million units of black and white TVs abroad. Thirteen years later, the country emerged as the world’s top seller of TVs for the first time with a global market share of 21 percent, beating Japan and Taiwan. Despite the large volume of TV exports, Korean TV makers earned just 1 U.S. dollar in net profit per every 50-dollar set sold, as most of their exports were sold under the names of U.S. or Japanese brands. Korean TV manufacturers learned the hard way what it was like to be nameless in the global market.

Brand Finance, a U.K.-based brand evaluation and consulting company, said Wednesday that Samsung Electronics ranked sixth among the brands of 500 major global corporations this year, up from 18th last year. Samsung’s brand value was estimated at 38.2 billion U.S. dollars this year. Trailing Samsung were major U.S. corporations General Electric and Coca-Cola. An obscure brand in the global market just 20 years ago, Samsung has now surpassed what were once the world’s top brands. Eight of the companies in the top 10 were U.S. brands, with Samsung and the U.K.’s Vodafone (ninth) being the only two non-American brands.

Walter Rando, the founder of the world`s first brand company Rando & Associates, said that while products are made at plants, brands are made in the hearts of customers. What he meant was how hard it is for a brand to make an impact on customers’ minds. Without rigorous efforts to promote the brand in addition to the products and technology, it would have been impossible to establish such a brand as Samsung.

I visited Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia in the mid-2000s. A staff member told me that its brand had often been mistaken as Japanese in the early days of its mobile phone business but that the company did not actively deny it. He suggested that Nokia took advantage of Japan`s national brand given the country`s status as an electronics powerhouse. The closer a country and a particular industry are related, the greater the effect of place of origin becomes. Reversely, a negative image of a country could hurt corporate sales. So far, corporations have been the major driving force behind the rise of the Korea brand. The country needs to help its corporations perform.

Editorial Writer Park Yong (parky@donga.com)