BenQ branding teaching notes
Teacher’s notes CD includes:
- 1. Word documents and PowerPoint slides on the main
topics of discussion from the case
Note: the word documents will include theoretical
information on main issues for discussion
- 2. Understanding the company: BenQ slide show
- 3. BenQ advertisement: Interactive tools to allow students
to evaluate a BenQ commercial
- 4. References and other relevant documents
BenQ branding teaching notes
Teacher’s Guide: BenQ Case Study
THE CHALLENGE
How does BenQ, a company from a
developing country, create a global brand?
EXTERNAL FACTORS
Brand Image,
creating a brand with
international appeal
Country-of-Origin Effect
(link with Asian
Stereotypes)
INTERNAL FACTORS
Branding Vs. OEM
Synergy and Conflicts: their
effects on revenue
Attracting top marketing
talents from around the
world
Marketing globally with
limited resources: Which
markets to enter first?
THE EFFECTS
Forecast for the Future: Can BenQ create a
globally recognized and respected brand?
Review issues for more details.
BenQ branding teaching notes
BenQ Case Study Teaching Notes
Primary issues:
1) What are some challenges BenQ, as a company from a developing country, encounter
when branding globally? Review BenQ’s branding strategy to evaluate its ability to
successfully create a global brand?
2) What kind of country-of-origin effects does the company face? How detrimental can
such an effect be? How can these effects be minimized?
3) Why did the company decide to create branded products? Discuss the effects of
falling profit margins from OEM businesses and the subsequent need to increase
profits. (Trend of the Electronic Industry in Taiwan)
4) Can a company successfully balance its branded products and its OEM manufacturing?
-
Currently, BenQ uses portions of its OEM revenue to promote its own brand, can
this last? Will OEM customers cancel contracts with a company that has turned
into a competitor?
5) How does BenQ’s brand awareness affect its ability to attract international marketing
talent?
6) If BenQ aims for a global branding strategy, with limited resources, which
geographical areas should they focus on first?
-
They have promoted heavily in Europe, will this strategy prove successful?
Or, should their promotion efforts focus on, Taiwan, India and China, where
their brand is more established?
BenQ branding teaching notes
Secondary issues:
-
Ask if the students feel that BenQ’s unique branding style (to share an
experience with customers) is being achieved?
-
Creating Brand Equity: Is BenQ successful in increasing brand awareness and
customer loyalty? Are they successful in creating brand associations? Do
customers perceive BenQ’s products as high quality?
-
Discuss the ways that the Taiwanese Government is currently pushing
companies to create brands to help improve the image of its countries products
and minimize the influence of the country-of-origin effect. Review for reference:
www.taiwaninnovalue.com
-
BenQ sends expatriates to foreign markets to train local marketers. Is this the
best way to transfer their branding strategy?
-
What type of product growth should BenQ engage in?
Review for reference: BenQ moving toward digital convergence, for example a
joint venture with Phillips
-
Compare BenQ to Samsung, LG, or Sanyo, who do they consider to be a
competitor?
-
Discuss the branding strategy of other successful Taiwanese brands, i. e.
Mitac/Synnex, Acer, Giant Bicycles. Students should review theory on building
global brands and compare it to BenQ’s strategy, based on company profile and
other relevant information.
-
Allow students to voice opinions on the BenQ advertisements included in the
Teacher’s CD. Prior to the viewing, discuss the BenQ slogan of ‘Bringing
Quality and Enjoyment to Life’ and suggest that the commercial aims to depict
this image. Ask if they agree and ask for any other comments on the storyline,
timeframe, content, etc.
-
BenQ is growing at a fast pace; can they balance their growth and successfully
react to market changes?
BenQ branding teaching notes
Theoretical Information on Primary Issues
Global Branding for a Developing World Company
Country-of-Origin Effect:
Definition:
Refers to the impact on customers of the "made-in" label, or, more generally, the country
a product or service is perceived to be from. Products or services from countries with a
positive image tend to be favorably evaluated, while products from less positively
perceived countries tend to be downgraded.1
Some countries are stereotyped negatively in terms of the quality of their products.
Products that are assembled in Mexico and Taiwan, for example, are generally viewed as
inferior. This is especially applicable in the electronics and automobile industries.
Effects:
In general, studies show a pronounced effect on the quality perceptions of products, with
country stereotypes affecting consumers' evaluative judgments of brands. In one study it
was found that the Japanese autos' strong penetration in the U.S. market in the 1970s was
based more on country advantages than on firm-specific advantages. American auto
buyers bought "a Japanese car", not necessarily Nissan or Toyota.
Its effects also limit the sales of products whose country is considered to produce less
superior products. This effect is considered to be a key attribute in the process of product
perception
Remedies:
Contrary to what one might expect, there is also evidence that these effects do not go
away over time; nonetheless, the changing perspective of countries in the minds of the
world’s consumers can have a positive effect. Increased global communication can
enable consumers to learn more about foreign countries; they learn what technologies and
products firms in the countries are good at. Hence, even if the country-of-origin effects
do not seem to go away, country perceptions do change over time.
Countries need to create or generate an illusion of superiority for their products. Under
these conditions, reception and processing of information are carried out in a passive,
selective and subjective manner. Suppliers of information have to be very persuasive in
their communication.
Why Branding
1
Johny K. Johansson , Global Marketing, Second edition. McGraw Hill Publications
BenQ branding teaching notes
Differentiation Strategy: Branding
There are two reasons why BenQ moved from OEM business and started to create its
own brand, they are: low profit margins and risk to loose OEM customer. During recent
years, prices for consumer electronics products have been decreasing. The main reasons
are cheap manufacturing and outsourcing to China, these forced companies to re-think
their business strategies. There are two ways to bring value to customers and, make them
buy your products. One is to offer a low price and the second is to add value to your
products and sell them at a higher premium. BenQ follows the second approach. By
marketing its products as one that brings enjoyment and enhancement to one’s life, BenQ
emphasizes on the emotional aspect of the product. By sponsoring UEFA 2004 and other
promotional events and social activities, BenQ is increasing its brand awareness. Brand
associations are created due to their company’s environmental and education concern.
(Tea plantation, etc...) (eMami).
OEM & Brand: Synergy or Conflict
ODMs typically own the intellectual property (IP) of the products they design and
manufacture for OEMs, enabling them to make branded generic products both for
themselves and their customers. Under the EMS model, OEMs retain all IP rights, which
prevent contractors from developing their own brands and competing with their own
customers.
When BenQ started to sell its branded products to end-users, it became a direct
competitor to its OEM clients. BenQ has to manage its relationship with them, because
at the moment OEM products generate more than 60% of BenQ’s total revenue and these
funds are resources that BenQ needs in order to brand its own products. The business
portfolio analysis can be implied.
In addition to resources, OEM expertise leverages BenQ’s technological development,
though these two businesses are independent, there is a close interaction between them.
Managing Talents:
Regarding promoting a brand around the world, it’s critical for a company to managing
talents as well as recruiting talents to acquire capabilities needed to achieve the goals of
the company. A company has three options to obtain the capabilities required. They are
“make approach,” “covert approach,” and “buy approach.” For BenQ, it uses more
“covert approach” to deliver training programs for its employees and send expatriates to
local markets and “buy approach” to bringing in experienced people from the outside.
Brand Awareness and Recruiting
BenQ branding teaching notes
Definition:
Brand awareness is the proportion of target customers that recall a brand. It is also about
the realization by a consumer of the existence and availability of a particular product.
Brand awareness is a common measure of marketing communications effectiveness.
Unaided awareness is spontaneous; aided or prompted awareness is when the name is
recognized among others that are listed or identified2. In developing brand awareness, it
is important to design communication messages that reflect the brand’s unique value for
specific audiences / potential customers.
Effects:
In a global economy, companies compete for global talents. For a company like BenQ,
which aims to promote its brand globally, it is critical to recruit marketing talents to
achieve the goal. However, limited brand awareness can negatively affect the ability of a
firm to attract marketing talent.
Challenges:
 Most top marketers seek employment in well-know global brands.
 Top talents prefer to market based on an already established brand-image. For
instance, a marketer may chose to work for Sony because it likes what the brand
offers to its customers.
 Developing brands do not give marketers as much branding resources as the big
market players.
Remedies:
Build Brand Awareness to attract marketers by offering additional incentives such as: the
challenge of being involved in creating a global brand, offer training programs to recruits
as well as the liberty to exercise their talents.
It is important to do internal promoting of the culture and the ideals and values of the
brand to employees to further strengthen unity in the company. Employees can participate
in the process of recruiting. For example, many Microsoft employees introduce their
capable friends and classmates to work for the company when they feel the person is
qualified and can fit the company culture. Employees, like consumers, have the power of
word-of-mouth that, as those who understand the company most, can promote the
company and attract more talents in their own network.
Global Marketing
2
Source: www.allaboutbranding.com/index.lasso
BenQ branding teaching notes
The globalization of today’s marketplace brings new demands on a marketer. Not only
are there important decisions about which country markets and segments to participate in
and what modes of entry to use, but a marketer must also help formulate the marketing
strategies in these countries along with their coordination and implementation.



In this section we want to draw the student’s attention to BenQ’s global branding
strategy. BenQ has decided to boost its marketing campaign into a highly
demanding market, such as Europe’s. The reason behind it is to gain brand
awareness in that market in order to later leverage their brand in emerging
markets such as India and Mainland China.
We want to make the student compare the benefits of a standard marketing
campaign versus a customized one.
Have the students think up or research the usual restraints to global marketing in
order to determine if these barriers apply to BenQ and its current global strategy.
Limits to Globalized Marketing3
There are four important limits to the degrees that a company should purse globalized
marketing.
Industry Factors:
Not all industries have the right characteristics for a global strategy. That is, the four
“globalization drivers” (market, competition, cost and government) may not be conducive
to a global approach.
Internal Resources:
Not all companies have the required resources (managerial and financial) to implement
global marketing effectively. Even if the aim is cost savings through economies of scale,
instituting a global marketing strategy requires some financial resources up front for the
necessary investment in advertising prototypes, benchmark designs and global
communication capabilities.
Different Mixes:
Not all marketing mix activities lend themselves to a global treatment. While product
design can often be uniform across several countries, language and cultural barriers make
it difficult to standardize salesmanship.
Global Turmoil:
Close coordination of strategies across countries can make the firm more vulnerable to
global financial turmoil. When financial markets tumble, as was the case of the late 1990s,
global integration means that no country is immune.
3
Global Marketing: foreign entry, local marketing & global management. 2 nd Edition. Johny K. Johansson