Toyota has received the title of the world’s most valuable car brand in 2014, for the second year in a row. The Japanese brand was followed by BMW, with Ford making the biggest improvement, overtaking VW and Nissan to reach the top five.
The “BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands” study released by market researcher Millward Brown estimated that Toyota’s 2014 brand value rose 21 percent to $29.6 billion.
“Toyota continues to be very clever about its brand and making it stand for quality and value, while it continues to have the green agenda going for it as the hybrid leader,” Peter Walshe, Global BrandZ director at Millward Brown, told Automotive News Europe.
Walshe added that Toyota is doing a good job managing the effects of its massive recalls in 2009 and 2010, while also being seen less as a foreign manufacturer in “markets that matter”.
Ford saw a spectacular increase in brand value by 56 percent to $11.8 billion compared with 2013. Walshe explains this by the fact that the company met individualized consumer expectations “both locally and on a global scale by doing things such as differentiating its fuel cell, infotainment systems and other technology from the competition in ways that matter most to the consumer.”
Second-ranked BMW’s value rose 7 percent to $25.7 billion, while Mercedes-Benz was third with a brand value of $21.5 billion, up 20 percent on 2013. Honda was fourth with a brand value of $14.1 million (up 14 percent).
The only member of the top 10 that saw its value drop was the Volkswagen brand, which fell 4 percent to $8.4 million and lost one position, dropping from 6th to 7th place.
By Dan Mihalascu
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