TrendForce: With Geographical Advantages, China Local Brands Rank High in China TV Market Brand Image & Visibility

In 2015, Samsung and LG, the two major Korean brands, may surpass 40% global market share, squeezing the market shares of Chinese and Japanese TV brands, according to a recent announcement from WitsView, a research division of TrendForce. Even though Korean brands are leading ahead of the pack in the global LCD TV market, a newly released “2014 China TV Brand Power Research Report” from AVANTI, a Chinese consumer research division of TrendForce, indicates that within the China market, Changhong, TCL and Hisense still possess an absolute geographical advantage in terms of brand image and visibility. 

According to the research from AVANTI, when brands are not prompted when mentioned, China’s Top 6 brand’s Changhong and TCL rank Top 1 and 2 among China consumer’s brand awareness at 47% and 46%, respectively. Hisense and Haier share the 3rd place at 37%. In terms of international brands, Samsung fares the best, with 36%, leading far ahead of other international brands. On the other hand, when brand names are prompted and mentioned, the brand visibility of China’s 6 major brands are all over 70%, while Samsung is the only international brand that reaches 71% of brand visibility. 

It is notable that even though the local China brands are more familiar among the Chinese consumers, international brands such as Samsung, Sony and Sharp are all having higher ratings than the local China brands in terms of brand loyalty, satisfaction rate, attractiveness, assessment and willingness to recommend the brand. The result has reflected the fact that international TV brands are currently superior to the China brands on competitiveness factors, including product quality, exterior design, brand awareness and service after purchase. 

“China’s LCD TV market began its accelerated growth starting from 2009, and currently, it is close to saturation, forcing the China brands to actively expand its overseas market,” said KK Chang, Research Manager at WitsView. However, in 2014, due to the tight supply for TV panels, the panel prices continued to rise, causing the brand TV product’s cost to climb. Except compressing the original profit margin, it also pushed China’s export brands on a halt. “How to keep expanding overseas market under the domestic competitions will be a current challenge for China TV makers,” added Chang. 

To reach a breakthrough beyond these difficulties, the China TV brands should not only to improve manufacturing and production cost advantages by strengthening the vertical integration capacity of upstream, mid-stream and downstream supply chains, but to expand their marketing scale in order to establish international brand images, solidify its sales channel system, provide comprehensive after sales service mechanisms, strengthen product exterior design and diversified applications. And to further advance the brand’s service satisfaction rate, the establishment of consumer behavior database will also be one of the key to analyze and predict the consumer behavior models and preferences.