Branding in Asia: The Creation, Development and Management of Asian Brands for the Global Market Book

Asia has arrived at a difficult juncture in its economic development. The Pacific rim economies, (Japan is excluded from this definition) grew in the 1970s, 80s and 90s by manufacturing cheap products either for existing brands such as Nike or on their own account. The trouble is that if you compete solely on price, when your products are simply "commodities", they are far more susceptible to the vagaries of the modern global economy--as they found to their cost during the near economic collapse of the late 1990s.While Asian businessmen cannot be held responsible for their country's exchange rates and foreign debt problems, Paul Temporal, author of Branding in Asia argues that the way they ran their enterprises didn't help them when the going got tough. "To a certain extent, poor management is to blame. Many Asian companies have been diagnosed to be suffering from strategic myopia as some settle for complacency and short-term gains", he writes.Temporal, author of the best selling Corporate Charisma is considered, by his publishers at least, to be Asia's leading expert on brand creation. His solution to the Asian problem is that its businesses should start thinking very urgently not just about copying technology and products and keeping costs down, but about adding value. In other words they need to be creating brands if they want to become players in the global economy in their own right rather than caddies and gofers for western and Japanese corporations.Branding in Asia is really a primer in branding and marketing from the Asian perspective. Sections on "understanding brands", "how brands are built" and "brand management" explain the fundamentals in a lucid and easily digestible way, while a particular Asian flavour is imparted by the use of 20 case studies of mostly Asian origin. Much of what Temporal writes would be old hat to most western businessmen although it may provide an eloquent refresher in just why brands are so important today. However as an introduction to brands and why Asian manufacturers need them, it does a worthy job. --Alex BenadyRead More