This year’s most valuable brand in Southeast Asia is grocery chain FairPrice of Singapore, according to Interbrand’s Southeast Asia Most Valuable Brands list.
Completing the top five were Parkson of Malaysia, SM Department Store of the Philippines, Matahari Department Store of Indonesia and Big C of Thailand.
“The brands that make our list have been quick to keep up with shifts in preference and expectations,” says Julian Barrans, MD, Interbrand Singapore.
“They have adapted to changing market needs while keeping a close eye on what consumers want.”
Each year, Interbrand studies what makes retail brands successful and documents their challenges. The retail brands that succeed have four things in common:
- Valuable retail brands monitor customers’ changing needs. In the race for relevance – that is, providing customers with a reason to choose a brand – the strongest retail brands relentlessly pursue knowledge about their consumers and incorporate those insights into their everyday behavior. With economic power distributed across an ever-growing portfolio of touch points, customers – not the brands themselves – set the rules of engagement.
- Leaders build a culture of efficient decision-making. The pace of retail and customer expectations around speed continues to increase. To respond, retail executives need to build cultures, processes and systems that enable quick decisions to be made. This isn’t just about assortment adjustments. It’s about organisational commitment to moving at a fast pace in order to remain competitive.
- It’s understood that experience extends beyond the store. The definition of retail is changing. ‘Retail’ no longer refers to physical stores; it refers to the complete experience created by retail brands – from physical stores to digital touch points to service experiences to products. Retailers witnessing big gains this year have committed to this holistic view of experience. Rather than antiquated methods of maximising stores at the expense of other channels, top brands think in terms of groups of touch points and the optimisation of experience.
- The best continuously optimise, scale and measure. The need to move quickly can pressure retail leaders to abandon their commitment to the tasks aligned with optimisation, scaling and measurement. Many do achieve top speed, as the industry demands, where it becomes challenging to evaluate on the fly. Across the top retailers, commitment to ongoing, meaningful measurement and refinement is clear.
Interbrand also ranked the following brands as most valuable in their respective countries:
- Woolworths (Australia)
- Natura (Brazil)
- Lululemon (Canada)
- Suning (China)
- Carrefour (France)
- Aldi (Germany)
- Uniqlo (Japan)
- Lotte Department Store (Korea)
- Oxxo (Mexico)
- Fairprice (Singapore)
- Tesco (UK)
