According to Millward Brown’s annual “BrandZ” survey, BMW ranks No. 30 in the 2011 Top 100 Most Valuable Brand. Last month, BMW kicked Lexus brand from the top spot in the U.S. premium market, but in the BrandZ Top Automakers, comes in second behind Toyota. BMW is then followed by Mercedes, Honda, Porsche, Nissan, VW, Ford, Audi and Lexus.
Millward Brown ranks companies based on customer perceptions (gauges via interviews with over one million consumers), paired with a thorough analysis of the companies’ financial and business data.
Nissan reports an important jump from last year, 17 points in value to the No. 6 spot, mostly due to its new Leaf electric vehicle.
The most valuable companies in the world come from the tech, fast food and general retail industries. As one would expect, the top spot goes to Apple ($153 billion value), followed by Google, IBM, McDonalds and Microsoft.
Apple ends Google’s four-year run as most valuable brand.
BrandZ valuations are similar in some ways to how an investment bank would value brands. They’re based in part on brand-equity tracking surveys and financial data from Bloomberg and analyst reports. Millward Brown uses these data to calculate the earnings attributable to a brand, how much of the earnings can be attributed to a close bond with its customers and growth potential for the brand-driven earnings.
Author: Horatiu Boeriu
Source: http://www.bmwblog.com/2011/05/09/brand ... bmw-no-30/