The first customer (right) of the newly opened Huawei flagship store in Vienna, Austria, displays her purchase in October. [Photo/Xinhua]

Progress made in developed and emerging markets

Chinese brands, including gaming companies, smartphone makers and short video apps, are continuing to expand their overseas business despite fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, and international awareness of those brands is seeing a sustained rise, experts said.

Chinese brands are generally stronger in developed markets, but some categories－including transportation apps, cars and e-commerce－are doing particularly well in emerging markets, according to a report issued by Google and Kantar Group, a data analytics and brand consulting company.

The report, the Top 50 Kantar BrandZ Chinese Global Brand Builders 2021, said the top 10 Chinese global brand builders are Alibaba, ByteDance, Huawei, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Oppo, Hisense, Haier, One-Plus and Vivo.

"Over the years, we have seen that Chinese companies that have invested in building their brands are able to achieve sustainable, quality growth and find resilience during financially stressed times," said Annabel Lin, managing director of China solution specialists and Asia-Pacific international growth at Google.

During this challenging time, those brands have managed to stay the course and increased their trust and relevance with consumers around the globe, Lin added.

The 2021 ranking surveyed more than 860,000 consumers in 11 markets, including seven developed markets－Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. Surveys were also done in four emerging markets－India, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil－where consumer interest in Chinese brands is rapidly growing and where more Chinese brands are starting to find opportunities, the report said.

Although Chinese brands have been affected by the pandemic, they have continued to invest in brand building to develop their business overseas. Top Chinese brands also have seen continued growth in awareness of their brands in developed markets, according to Kantar.

The past two years were certainly the most challenging for Chinese brands going overseas. In the face of global disruption, the Top 50 Chinese brands remained aligned with their core values and pivoted to new approaches. By moving quickly on the right strategic insights, they found ways to not merely survive, but to grow quickly during disruptive times, the report added.

The top 50 Chinese global brand builders report reached its fifth anniversary in 2021. Google and Kantar began to analyze Chinese global brands in 2017.

"For the first four years of the ranking, one of the main tasks Chinese companies were urged to undertake was to build strong, resilient and truly global brands. Could they take their unmatched logistics and innovation capabilities and use them to create a brand positioning that made them meaningful, different and salient?" said Doreen Wang, president of Kantar Greater China.

According to Wang, 2020 served as a test of that advice, and it's a test that many Chinese brands passed with flying colors. When going global, Chinese brands are not only selling products but are also developing an ecosystem mindset.

They are delivering their own products directly to consumers and in some cases, serving as commerce platforms in their own right, she said.

Building ecosystems overseas often means becoming partners with local giants and sometimes multinational corporations, together creating commerce platforms that are much greater than the sum of their parts. The goal is not merely to develop a great reputation for products and services but to lay the foundation for an enduring presence and long-term success, she added.

While Chinese brands are generally stronger in developed markets, some categories are doing particularly well in emerging markets, including transportation apps, cars and e-commerce, Wang said.

Although India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Mexico are large, robust markets, they have sometimes been overlooked and underserved. This has created a gap between the current state of products and services and what would be considered ideal. These markets often face considerable manufacturing and logistics challenges that keep some consumers from having a satisfactory experience.

Employees work at a digital distribution center of Cainiao Network in Liege, Belgium, in November. [Photo/Xinhua]

Chinese brands have an opportunity to leverage their advantages in areas like logistics and make inroads with these consumers by upgrading their current services, the report said.

A good example is Alibaba, which topped the most recent Top 20 Chinese Star Brands in Emerging Markets, a sublist compiled by Kantar and Google. The company invested heavily to introduce its Cainiao supply chain and tracking system in 152 countries and regions by the end of 2020. The ability to enable consumers to know where a package is and when it will arrive in logistically challenged environments is a critical advantage, according to the report.

Also, the company's AliExpress service has been putting serious efforts into improving its logistics and providing a better experience for its customers. To get around painfully slow delivery times, the brand charters at least three flights a week to deliver goods to the country, the report added.

The report said that despite the disruption of the pandemic, brand power, which measures the ability of a brand to grow its overseas market share, has remained relatively stable across categories, with consumer electronics and mobile gaming still making up the lion's share.

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, for instance, was the top smartphone vendor in terms of shipments in 11 countries and regions in the third quarter of 2021, and it was among the top five in 59 countries and regions globally, according to market research company Canalys.

Xiaomi's overseas revenue hit 40.9 billion yuan ($6.45 billion) in the third quarter of 2021, accounting for 52.4 percent of its total revenue, the company said.

Oppo, another Chinese smartphone vendor, also saw fast growth in overseas markets. Canalys said that in the Middle East and Africa, Oppo climbed to fourth place in market share in the first half of 2021 with year-on-year growth of 106 percent. At the forefront have been the United Arab Emirates with growth of 196 percent and Saudi Arabia with 218 percent year-on-year growth.

Mobile gaming is another area where Chinese companies have a strong determination to go global. Wang Wei, general manager of AppsFlyer Greater China, an Israeli mobile marketing analytics company, said over half of AppsFlyer's customers in China are gaming companies, who are eager to grow globally. AppsFlyer has about a market share of 70 percent in global marketing analytics, and the corresponding figure for the Chinese market is about 80 percent.

Gaming enterprises are among the first Chinese companies to explore overseas markets. "We noticed their efforts as early as before 2010," Wang said.

Half of China's overseas advertisers are game advertisers, both in terms of quantity and the revenue they bring to the company, he said. They are very stable, whether the economy is good or times are challenging, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, and AppsFlyer's revenue from gaming is growing continuously, the company said.

Chinese comics companies are also ratcheting up their push to expand in international markets. Kuaikan, a major Chinese mobile comics platform, aims to bring more global attention to Chinese comics.

Chen Anni, CEO and founder of Kuaikan, said the company is working with more than 70 comics platforms covering nearly 200 countries and regions in 12 languages, including Japanese, Korean, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian.

The company, backed by Chinese internet heavyweight Tencent Holdings Ltd, raised $240 million in a new funding round in August, and a part of the new cash will be used to accelerate its overseas expansion.

"In Japan, South Korea and some other countries where users are willing to pay for comics, we are trying to expand our influence to generate more revenue. In Southeast Asian countries, where the comics communities are growing rapidly, we are trying to attract more people to Chinese comics," Chen added.

Wang of AppsFlyer, said: "Chinese companies' footprints are all over the world. There is no place where Chinese people do not venture."