The importance of image marketing

I read a ariticle about difficulties of Lexus sales. Lexus is a dominant car model of Toyota. And it impacted the American market and captured much of the car market. But now Lexus sales are declining between Japan and USA. The reason is Lexus is too japanese style. In Japan, people think Lexus is not attractive. Because it's too nationalized and don't appear as a high-quality sedan. And Japanese are in favor of German cars and USA cars. The example is BMW and Mercedes Benz.

It's similar to the state of Korea. In Korea, people love to buy a foreign car. Even if the qualities of korean cars are good as the foreign cars, Korean thinks foreign brand cars are much more luxurious that Korea brand cars. But interestingly, the sales forces of Korean cars are increasing outside of Korea. And it's the same in the case of Japanese car. Although the sales forces of Lexus in USA are now declining, originally the share of Lexus in USA is large.

In these two cases, I realize that the image of a product is so important. The common problem is the images of the brand. In fact, the design and quality of Japanese and korean cars are so competitive in the global market. But the members of two nations think their product is inferior to the their foreign competitors. And now companies have to reposition their brand images in own nations. I think Samsung is a good example that balanced their images between Korea and global market. Samsung's products are treating as a the highest grade both in Korea and global market. I think the reason of these results is Samsung's constant marketing efforts. Through a few years, Samsung exert to improve their image. In Korea, they continuously advertise their new logo and their fresh image. And in global market, they sponsored several popular sports team and advertise in the center of USA. Through these processes Samsung's image completely changed and now they are a global leading company. Consequently, the image marketing is a key to success in global and domestic markets.

reference: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_13/b4077072420049.htm?chan=innovation_auto+design_top+stories

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