Rudlin Consulting Rudlin Consulting
  • About
  • Services
  • Blog
  • Clients
  • Publications
  • Contact us
  • Privacy
  • English
  • About
  • Services
  • Blog
  • Clients
  • Publications
  • Contact us
  • Privacy
  • English
  •  

docomo

Home / Posts Tagged "docomo"

Tag: docomo

Branding without egotism

Another survey on the top 100 global brands has just come out, and yet again Japanese brands are not punching their weight, considering the size of their revenues and the Japanese economy. How you measure brand value is of course a contentious point. It’s often an attempt to quantify how much it would cost to buy the brand, based on some kind of residual figure from the value of the company – having subtracted all the other assets – as well as qualitative research on customer evaluations.

Some of the Japanese corporate names missing from the list would come nearer the top if only Japanese customers were surveyed. But even then, I’m guessing the monetary value that could be attached to the brand would still not be as high as for some Western companies, due to the fact that Japanese companies don’t focus so much on profitability, or even “branding”.

Discussions about brand with Japanese executives seem to indicate that they see a “brand” as mostly about advertising and visible forms of identity such as logo and image.

To compete on a global basis, Japanese companies need to understand better what Western customers expect from a strong brand. But there is a danger as well in becoming too focused on brand, to the extent that it becomes a form of egotism, and prevents collaboration.

It’s been over 15 years since NTT DoCoMo Inc launched its i-mode service, putting Japan far ahead of any other nation, even the US, in terms of customers using sophisticated mobile phones to purchase applications and content on the internet. The rest of the world wondered ho to replicate Japan’s success, and many speculated this could never be reproduced outside of Japan because of some kind of special cultural characteristics of Japanese consumers and society. Now, looking at the global success of the iPhone and other mobile technologies, there is no doubt that consumers across the world will buy applications and content for their phones, given the opportunity.

My view is that took the rest of the world so long to catch up because non-Japanese network providers and mobile phone handset manufacturers were so busy protecting the profitability of their brands, that they were unable to replicate the mutually beneficial supply chain ecosystem that DoCoMo built up in Japan.

When I went to Japan in 2002, assisting a British mobile phone application developer, DoCoMo refused to take the credit for a particular image recognition application that it was offering, saying they were only a network provider, and we should talk to the application developers. The application developers said they just provided applications for whatever features handset manufacturers were incorporating. The handset manufacturers said they were simply humble suppliers to the network operators.

Now, with the advent of cloud computing, and an increasingly networked society, Japanese companies are wondering how to compete against the likes of U.S. online titans like Amazon and Google. Strengthening their global brands will help, but they should not lose sight of the fact that a key element of many Japanese companies’ brands is their ability to collaborate, without egotism.

This article originally appeared in the Nikkei Weekly

For more content like this, subscribe to the free Rudlin Consulting Newsletter. 最新の在欧日系企業の状況については無料の月刊Rudlin Consulting ニューズレターにご登録ください。

Share Button
Read More

Last updated by Pernille Rudlin at 2021-10-12.

Recent Posts

  • Top 30 Japanese Employers in Italy 2022
  • Top 30 Japanese Employers in Germany – 2022
  • People rather than shareholding unite Japan’s conglomerates
  • Pernille Rudlin gives evidence to the UK Trade and Business Commission on UK-Japan trade and business relationships
  • Japanese manufacturing in the UK – resilient, but not growing

Categories

  • Africa
  • Brexit
  • China and Japan
  • Coaching
  • Corporate brands, values and mission
  • Corporate culture
  • Corporate Governance
  • cross cultural awareness
  • CSR
  • customer service
  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • European companies in Japan
  • European identity
  • Foreign Direct Investment
  • Globalization
  • History of Japanese companies in UK
  • Human resources
  • Innovation
  • Internal communications
  • Japanese business etiquette
  • Japanese business in Europe
  • Japanese customers
  • M&A
  • Management and Leadership
  • Marketing
  • Middle East
  • negotiation
  • Presentation skills
  • Reputation
  • Seminars
  • Social & Digital Media
  • speaker events
  • Trade
  • Uncategorized
  • Virtual communication
  • webinars
  • Women in Japanese companies
  • Working for a Japanese company
  • Zero carbon

RSS Rudlin Consulting

  • Top 30 Japanese Employers in Italy 2022
  • Top 30 Japanese Employers in Germany – 2022
  • People rather than shareholding unite Japan’s conglomerates
  • Pernille Rudlin gives evidence to the UK Trade and Business Commission on UK-Japan trade and business relationships
  • Japanese manufacturing in the UK – resilient, but not growing
  • A very timely introduction of a new trade compliance diploma from the International Trade Institute
  • UK no longer the biggest host of Japanese automotive manufacturing in Europe – and the rise of Africa
  • UAE and Japanese companies – diversity and decarbonization
  • Trends in Japan owned financial services companies in the UK
  • Working from home means you won’t get promoted – in Japan and elsewhere too?

Search

Affiliates

Japan Intercultural Consulting

Cross cultural awareness training, coaching and consulting. 異文化研修、エグゼクティブ・コーチング と人事コンサルティング。

Japan Intercultural Consulting EMEA

Japan Intercultural Consulting UK

Japan Intercultural Consulting France

Japan Intercultural Consulting Germany

Professional Services Alliance

Translation, recruitment, market research and legal services for companies doing business in Japanese. 通訳・翻訳、人材紹介、市場調査・参入支援、法務全般

PS English

PS English has specialised in teaching English to Japanese people in the UK since 2001. PS Englishは、2001年以来、英国で日本人を対象に英語のレッスンを提供してきました。

LinguaLift

LinguaLift provides guidance to thousands of busy Japanese language learners through a course structured so that you always know what to do next.

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required
Email Format

To receive the newsletter, please tick "Email" below. Rudlin Consulting Ltd will also use the information you provide on this form to be in touch with you and to provide updates and marketing by email.

You can change your mind at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of any email you receive from us, or by contacting us at pernilleatrudlinconsultingdotcom. We will treat your information with respect. For more information about our privacy practices please visit our website. By clicking below, you agree that we may process your information in accordance with these terms.

We use MailChimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to MailChimp for processing. Learn more about MailChimp's privacy practices here.

Recent Blogposts

  • Top 30 Japanese Employers in Italy 2022
  • Top 30 Japanese Employers in Germany – 2022
  • People rather than shareholding unite Japan’s conglomerates
  • Pernille Rudlin gives evidence to the UK Trade and Business Commission on UK-Japan trade and business relationships
  • Japanese manufacturing in the UK – resilient, but not growing

Rudlin Consulting on Twitter

  • @jessphillips being brilliant right now on @Channel4News about the underlying power relationships and sense of self… https://t.co/20MHTrhTnT about 8 hours ago from Twitter for Android in reply to jessphillips ReplyRetweetFavorite
  • That's the trouble about getting tangled up with despots in business - precisely because you justify it as being go… https://t.co/15JjEESrcN about 17 hours ago from Twitter Web App ReplyRetweetFavorite
  • Fujifilm to pump $1.6bn into biopharma in U.S. and Europe - although the article does not mention the UK, I'm guess… https://t.co/stZ8w89de6 08:14:37 AM June 30, 2022 from Twitter Web App ReplyRetweetFavorite
  • This is such an important painting both in culture with a big C as in one of Sir Joshua Reynolds finest portraits b… https://t.co/XErGUZFavN 07:02:00 PM June 29, 2022 from Twitter for Android ReplyRetweetFavorite
@pernilleru

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Web Development: counsell.com