Volkswagen and Toyota may slug it out for the title of the world’s biggest car maker, but the Japanese marque has trounced the German one for brand value.
In a study of the world’s most valuable brands by US consultancy Interbrand, Toyota had the most valuable brand of all the world’s car makers, with a cited value of more than $50bn to rank seventh overall.
Despite being the world’s second largest-selling car maker behind the Volkswagen Group, Toyota’s brand value dropped 6% in the Best Global Brands 2017 list.
Toyota’s decline in brand value allowed South Korea’s Samsung, which has an automotive link with batteries for battery-electric and hybrid cars, to leapfrog into sixth place overall, at $56.2bn.
Toyota’s arch-rival Volkswagen grew its brand value by a single percentage point, creeping to a lowly ranking of 40th overall, and ninth among car makers, with a brand value of $11.5bn.
The ranking showed little relationship between brand value and sales volumes, or even profit per share, with Mercedes-Benz listed as the second-ranked car brand ($48bn, after a 10% improvement over its 2016 brand value). BMW chased Mercedes to be third among all car-making brands, with its $42bn value.
As strong as Toyota’s brand value was judged to be, it paled behind the world’s strongest brand, Apple ($184bn), second-ranked Google ($142bn) and Microsoft ($80bn). The strongest nontech brand was the fourth-ranked Coca-Cola ($70bn), then Amazon ($65bn). – BD Motor News
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