Analysis of the Current State of Branded Agriculture Development in China

Based on differences in resource endowments and levels of economic development across regions, agricultural brand development can be broadly grouped into three major categories: first, regions with dual advantages in both resources and economy. Second, regions with medium levels of both resources and economic development, or medium regions where resources and economic development levels are complementary. Third, regions with particularly weak resources or particularly weak economies. In developing agricultural product brands, the first step is to make full use of a region's natural resource advantages and develop agricultural products with regional characteristics; then introduce capital, and through technological innovation, expanding scale and promoting brands, raise the added value of agricultural products and build famous, high-quality and distinctive agricultural product brands.

From the perspective of category distribution, based on all the agricultural product geographical indication data published and recognized by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce as of the end of 2012, 67% of the products covered by China's agricultural product geographical indications are primary agricultural products, while initially processed and finely processed agricultural products account for 24% and 9% respectively. This shows that for agricultural products in the true sense, that is, primary agricultural products, an important means of brand development is to develop regional brands centered on agricultural product geographical indications.

⟦NL> Because finely processed agricultural products are more highly standardized, their brand management is relatively mature and they have long been included within the category of industrial products. Among China's agricultural product geographical indications, the largest share is fruits, vegetables and melons (49%), followed by livestock products (15%), medicinal materials (8%) and aquatic products (7%), then grain and oil crops (4%) and flowers and nursery stock (3%), while tobacco leaves, crude tea and edible fungi each account for no more than 2%. It can thus be seen that China's agricultural product brands are mainly concentrated in everyday foods such as vegetables, fruits and melons, and livestock products. Part of the reason for the relatively low proportions of grain and oil crops and crude tea is that a considerable portion of these primary agricultural products has already been processed into initially processed or finely processed agricultural products with greater added value.

Brand awareness is the ability of potential consumers to recognize or recall a certain type of product under a certain brand. The level of brand awareness reflects the degree to which consumers know and accept the brand and its products, thereby reflecting the brand's market competitiveness. The number of China's well-known agricultural product trademarks grew from 27 in 2008 to 274 in 2012, and their proportion of the total number of well-known trademarks in those years also rose from 11.8% to 21.1%. This indicates that, as the building of China's agricultural product brands accelerates, the awareness of China's agricultural product brands is also increasingly rising.