Two decades ago, although Taiwan became the 14th largest trading nation in the world, many foreign buyers still perceived made-in-Taiwan or MIT products as low-priced products, thereby forcing some Taiwan industries to cut back their prices 15% to 20% over comparable products in the global markets. This led to an annual loss of US$18 to US$24 billion in foreign exchange.
In order to enhance products made in Taiwan as well as boost Taiwan’s competitiveness and image in the international markets, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) committed itself to initiate some effective steps to accomplish this purpose.
The 1988 Quality Enhancement Plan, 1989 Product Design Ability Enhancement Plan, and the 1990 Image Enhancement Plan (IEP) were launched, which helped to upgrade the product design, quality, and image of Taiwan enterprises.
As Taiwan successfully evolved itself from dependence on foreign imports to local OEM production, and later on becoming a global leader in IT and many high tech industries, the need for international branding has become the growing norm for most enterprises.
With branding beginning to emerge and seen as an important booster for Taiwan’s economic development, the Branding Taiwan Program was developed in 2006, for which the Image Enhancement Plan, or IEP, plays an important role.

Objectives
The IEP steadily enhanced the image of MIT products through three different stages with a specific objective on each stage.

• First stage (1990 to 1995): Focused on reversing and changing the negative image of MIT products.
• Second stage (1995 to 2000): The concept of Innovalue (“innovation” plus “added value”) was created, and served as the core ingredient of a cutting-edge product and the most important criteria for a product’s value.
• Third stage (present): Reformation of MIT product image through an integrated global information campaign. The current objective is to transform Taiwan from a regional manufacturing center into a global R&D/Innovation center.