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When England lost the UEFA European Football Championship to Germany in 1996, furious English hooligans rioted in London. They smashed Mercedes-Benz and BMW cars and set fire to a Häagen-Dazs ice cream shop. But the hooligans made a mistake with Häagen-Dazs -- while the ice cream brand has a German-sounding name, the company is actually from the U.S.
Häagen-Dazs is a meaningless word coined by the founders of the company, its umlaut carefully placed to remind consumers of Northern Europe and its high-quality dairy products. One of the keys to the company's success was making Americans think the company is European. The company's strategy exploited Americans' vague ideas of Europe and their desire for European imports.
Japanese carmaker Toyota adopted a similar strategy. When Toyota launched its high-end Lexus brand, the automobile company obscured the car's nationality to avoid it being tainted by the consumer image of Japanese cars, which were considered nice but cheap. Toyota set up a separate corporation in the U.S. and even debuted Lexus in the U.S. before it launched in Japan. The automobile company sent engineers and marketing experts to the U.S. and let them enjoy a luxury lifestyle for several months so they would know how to develop a car for wealthy Americans.
In a recent survey on brand nationalities, 57.8 percent of American college students said they think Samsung is a Japanese company. Some 41.9 percent of the respondents said that LG is a U.S. company and 26 percent said it's Japanese. Hyundai was known as a Japanese business by 55.7 percent of the respondents. It is not surprising then that most of them also thought Finland's Nokia and Denmark's Lego are also American companies, while America's Motorola was thought to be Japanese. It's a common phenomenon in the global economy -- it's getting harder for consumers to recognize where businesses come from.
However, when the same respondents were asked about product quality, a mere 39.7 percent said that Korean products were reliable, less than half the 81.8 percent who said the same of Japanese products. That means it is helpful for Korean brands to be thought of as Japanese. We should think about this -- Americans buy products from Samsung, LG and Hyundai because they think they come from a third country. We have to enhance the value of Korean brands in order for people around the world to buy Korean products because they actually come from Korea.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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