MATSUSHITA will scrap its Japanese brand name "National" and start a marketing blitz called "Hello Panasonic" in an ambitious drive to boost market share, company officials said yesterday.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, a major Japanese electronics maker that rivals Sony Corp, has decided to change its company name to Panasonic Corp next month, dropping the name of its founder, Konosuke Matsushita, one of Japan's pioneering entrepreneurs credited with leading the country's modernization after World War II.

The move symbolizes the company's growing international stature and ambitions. Panasonic has long been its brand name abroad.

The end of the National name also highlights the company's break from its past, when it built its customer base in Japan through an army of electronics salesman-cum-repairman at small National stores around the country.

Under its new marketing campaign, Matsushita would push products that connected digitally, such as audiovisual products that linked with each other and home security gadgets that linked with car navigation equipment, it said. Products would also become more green to respond to growing public concerns about global warming, it said. Sixty percent of electricity consumed in a household was from appliances, according to Matsushita.

Executive Vice President Shunzo Ushimaru said his company had boosted Japanese market share from 20 percent in 2001, to 28 percent this year, and hoped to lift that further.