Toyota leads brand value survey, Mercedes leads luxury brands

Brand value can be a fickle thing. It’s impossible to measure accurately and it can be affected by numerous volatile factors, but at the end of the day if a consumer is willing to pay more for one brand over another then brand value becomes a vital indicator of a company’s overall value.

Nowhere is this more important than in the car industry, where a consumer’s perception of a brand can often be the main decisive factor when it comes to buying a new car. One of the best indicators of how valuable each brand is compared to its rivals is the annual Best Global Brands survey conducted by consultancy firm Interbrand and BusinessWeek.

Once again, Coca-Cola has taken out the top spot, now its eighth year in a row, followed closely by IBM, Microsoft and GE. When it comes to automotive brand value, Toyota as usual dominates the list with a sixth place ranking and a brand value of $34 billion. The next closest carmaker is Mercedes-Benz, which is ranked 11th overall and is worth $25.6 billion in brand value, followed by BMW in 13th spot with $23.3 billion in brand value.

To be eligible for the survey, each brand must derive at least a third of its earnings outside its home country, be recognizable outside of its base of customers, and have publicly available marketing and financial data. Researchers evaluate brand value in the same way any other corporate asset is valued - on the basis of how much it is likely to earn for the company in the future. They use a combination of analysts’ projections, company financial documents, and qualitative and quantitative analysis to arrive at the final brand value estimates.

The top ten automotive brands in order and value are as follows:

1) Toyota - $34b
2) Mercedes-Benz - $25.6b
3) BMW - $23.3b
4) Honda - $19.1b
5) Ford - $7.9b
6) Volkswagen - $7b
7) Audi - $5.4b
8) Hyundai - $4.8b
9) Porsche - $4.6b
10) Lexus - $3.6b