$US1589bn?
From which orifice do they extract these numbers?
Something's rotten in Cupertino, according to the ninth annual “ BrandZ” rating of technology vendors, as Apple has lost its place atop the list of the world's most valuable technology brands to Google. The list is cobbled together by Millward Brown, an outfit claiming expertise in “brand equity research” among other things …
Per the author, all Google has to do is drop from first to second next year and it'll be rotting.
In 2011 Oxford topped the Times University League Table. In 2012 it had dropped to second place. In 2013 it dropped to third. So, yeah, that was the end of relevancy for Oxford for all time.
Perhaps the story was edited since you posted, but it shows $158.9 billion, not $1589 billion. Or perhaps that was a typo on your part and you were questioning the hyper accuracy of these numbers?
That latter is certainly justified, as the formula used to calculate these numbers are pulled out of their ass, calculating it a decimal place is rather silly. The reason they do it, of course, is to lend an air of scientific credibility to their results.
There are other ways to measure brand value, such as "goodwill" in accounting, which is defined as the excess valuation of the company over and above its financial value. That is, if you look at the cash flows, growth, etc. you can use well known formulas to calculate what a generic company should be worth. If its market cap is higher than that, it has positive goodwill (like say Coca Cola, since it is a long standing well-loved company with a "secret formula" that can't be duplicated) If the market cap is lower, it has negative goodwill (like a company might after a big scandal)
"The reason they do it, of course, is to lend an air of scientific credibility to their results."
Interesting Fact: Everest was measured in 1856 at exactly 29,000 feet. However to avoid sounding as though the measurement was just an approximation and therefore would not be seen as an official 'exact' height the figure was changed to 29,002 feet - although it has subsequently been revised by 27 feet in the mid 1950s it was surprisingly accurate for the time.
I'm sure there's some advanced business thingy-ma-bobber here that I'm just not following, but when I hear brand value, I think wanting to buy a product just because of the brand.
It would seem to me that Coke, McDonald's and Marlboro have most of their 100BN+ market caps tied up in their brand. The product itself has little else to distinguish it. Google by contrast relies much more on the competitive merits of its technology than on brand. And, I can't remember the last time I heard someone want to buy something because Microsoft made the product (outside of ecosystem lock-in which is different).
What's the deal?
There nothing advanced going on here, so don't feel like you're being left out.
All industries have similar 'brand value' reports put out each year. Basically, these reports are guidelines that help advertising agencies determine how much Google is going to have to pay to have a Nexus used by the leading actor in a show or how much MS has to pay to have the Windows logo stuck on the back of every monitor in a show.
The reports don't act as a direct cost calculator, just provide some variables to plug into whatever pricing model the advertising agency uses. The actual numbers in the report are meaningless. They use a dollar amount only because dollar figures play well in the press and that attention is directly reflected in next years reports.
These sorts of things used to all use proprietary scoring systems and the output was '.0001' as the lowest figure and '.9999' as the highest figure, but that's boring as shit to look at and nobody cares if there's no $. It's all marketing data collected by marketing agencies to be used by marketing agencies to keep the costs of advertising climbing.
It's safe for you to ignore this and carry on. It's all drivel unless you're a marketing agency :)
Shareholders want their share price to increase - that's why they invest in them.
If the business profits grow it is a key indicator of business value and so share price rises. Continual profits can always pay out dividends (for the companies that do) but if they make less profit (unless there is a good reason for it such as a massive investment in an exciting new project) than last year this could, among other factors, affect the value of the company and therefore a reduction in share price. No-one wants a decline in their share value so investors will jump ship.
Every year the pressure is on a company to be growing and therefore relevant. Obviously, above inflation growth is unsustainable ad infinitum but there's nearly always a bigger piece of the pie you can try to have until you max out that pie and have to find another pie to take a piece of (hence companies like Amazon diversifying into groceries/cloud/hardware etc).