500 most valuable Chinese brands unveiled (China)

The World Brand Lab (WLB) unveiled the list of 500 most-valuable-Chinese-brands at Beijing Thursday, which was determined by the analyses of finance, consumer behavior and Brand strength. China Mobile Ltd. (0941. HK)took the top spot of this national brands team with 238.568 billion yuan ($38.46 billion) brand value, compared with the third place last year.

The average brand value: 13.1 billion yuan ($ 2 billion)

The total value of 500 most valuable Chinese brands in 2012 was 6583.76 billion yuan ($1033.65 billion) and the average value of it was 13.1 billion yuan ($ 2 billion). The lowest value of this list was increased to 1.19 billion yuan ($186.83 million) from 1.02 billion yuan ($160.14 million) last year.

Besides China Mobile, State Grid (223.97 billion yuan), Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (1398.HK) (221.75 billion yuan), China Central Television (154.67 billion yuan) and China Life Insurance Company Limited (2628.HK) (126.16 billion yuan) were the top 5 companies in the list. In the view of brand value, these brands were forward into the world-class brand camps.

No.1: food & drinks industry.

The list contained 24 relevant industries, including food & drinks, textile & garment, media, IT, household appliances, automobile and energy. With 80 brands be chosen, the food & drinks industry had the most companies in the list, which accounted for 16 percent of total. The industry, which had the closest relations with consumers, was the top for recent 5 years. The textile & garment and media industry ranked second and third this year, with 50 and 45 brands and occupying 10 percent and 9 percent respectively.

Chinese brands’ trust degree decline.

WLB used “trust barometer” to track the brand consume trend of Chinese for six straight years, covering 25 countries in Asia, Europe, America, Africa and Australia.

In a sample survey with 8,000 people, Swiss brand replaced German to be the most trustworthy one. German became second and American was third still. As the influence of food safety crisis, Chinese brand continued to drop to No.14. However, the biggest decline came from Finland, which partly result from the weak performance of Nokia.