India's Most Wanted IT Brands

How persuasive are the IT brands? What's their brand pull? How 'future ready' are they? What's their brand loyalty like? We find out for 179 brands across 20 enterprise and 5 consumer IT categories

Sunday, September 17, 2006

The real value of a brand is not only realized by how many people own it, but also by what it does to stay shining in the future. This can be measured by how readily its name is recalled by buyers in their minds. Further, how many of those who recall it would also like to buy it? If they do buy it, then are they likely to stay with it in the future as well? These are also some of the key points we've focused on in our survey this time. The traditional Users' Choice that we had been doing every year is now passé. This year onwards it will be called Most Wanted IT Brands of India. The survey part of the story, however, remains the same. What's different are our findings and analysis of brands in each category. We've still gone out to key IT decision makers and consumers with buying power across the country for enterprise and consumer IT brands.

But how we analyze the results has changed completely. We've gone beyond finding out which IT brands users are likely to buy in the coming six months, and instead compared and analyzed each IT brand's performance. This time, we've looked at 20 enterprise and 5 consumer IT brands categories. While you'll find the analysis of individual categories in the subsequent pages, there were a few patterns we noticed from our survey, which we'll talk about here.

We found that for each category, there were, on an average, three to four IT brands that had the lion's share. And in many cases the brands that had the highest current ownership weren't as persuasive as the ones with lower ownership. Some underdogs had a stronger brand pull. In most categories, you'll also notice in the graphs, a crowded corner of brands with lower top of mind recall and current ownership. We've not really analyzed the movement of these brands, because their overall numbers were too low to pass any judgments on them.

Lastly, in many enterprise segments, there were some CIOs who didn't name any brand that they might shift to over the coming six months. The inference here is that enterprise IT purchasing is completely different for different types of products and solutions. For instance, if you've already deployed ERP, the probability of shifting to another ERP package later is pretty low. So the brand loyalty here would be pretty high. Likewise for many other enterprise IT solutions.

Now let's look at the methodology we've followed for the survey.

Survey methodology
Mrutyunjay Mishra and Sanjay Tiwari, JuxtConsult

Every year PCQuest modifies the methodology and presentation of how to judge the IT brands. Two years back, they made a major change in the presentation, by tracking brand shift and brand loyalties. Last year, the split the whole exercise into two-separated the Developers part of the survey and introduced the online survey. This year they have taken the presentation a level ahead and we have been the consultants for the same.
This time we again conducted an online survey for consumer products. The survey was open for 10 days and 564 users responded. For the enterprise segment, we decided to cover only the key decision makers from the top 1,000 companies of India. We are really grateful to the key decision makers in 176 organizations who could take time out from their schedule to respond.

We have modified our questionnaire a little this year by adding 'top of mind recall' as the first question for each category. The other two questions remain the same as last year-second asking them for their 'most likely' choice of the primary brand if they were to buy the same category of products in the coming six months and the third asking the respondents for the primary brand they currently 'own' for the same product category.
The modification was essentially done to capture and measure both the current market (user) share as well as the current mind share of the brands. The reason to do so was the realization that it is only a combination of both current market share and current mind share that determines the real 'equity' of the brand or its 'future readiness;' not its 'past performance.'

To assess and measure the future 'readiness' of the brands surveyed, we used our proprietary Brand Momentux Model, which is a simple but unique brand tracking model based on the time tested 'theory of momentum' from the world of Physics.

Just as the combination of a body's mass and speed (velocity) is used in Physics to measure the 'momentum' with which the body is moving, the combination of a brand's mass (its current market share) and its speed (its current mind share) can be used to measure the 'momentum' with which a brand is moving in to the future to compete for market shares.

Brand Momentux model
Each 'measure' used in the model reflects a 'milestone' in the consumer's interaction with the brand during the buying process -from recall to consideration, to intention to buy, to usage.

To measure how well a brand is performing at these three critical 'transition points', the JuxtConsult Brand Momentux Model uses a set of simple but effective diagnostics. These are:

• Brand Persuasion: How much the consumer is convinced about the brand to not just consider it but also 'prefer' it over the other brands in the category (by intending to buy it). It reflects the 'persuasive' power of the brand (of its positioning, proposition, benefits, image, value, etc).
• Brand Pull: How much is the brand able to attract and convince the consumers of competing brands or non-users of the category to prefer or 'switch over' to the brand. It reflects the 'consumer pull' power of the brand.
• Brand Loyalty: How much is the brand able to convince its existing consumers to 'continue' to prefer and buy the brand. It reflects the retention or
  'loyalty' power of the brand.
• Brand Momentum: It is measured as a combination of the current 'mass' of consumers the brand has, together with the 'current speed' at which it is (likely to) gain or lose consumers as a result of its current marketing performance. Symbolically, the brand momentum indicates the future 'market share' potential of the brand.

The current 'mass' of the brand is measured as the 'cumulative' market (or user) share the brand has accumulated in the market place. This is reflected by its existing consumer base (including historical buyers who are still using the brand).

To measure the 'speed' at which a brand is moving in the market place, the model uses the three critical speed 'acceleration' factors from the brand's current performance parameters. These are the brand's current 'persuasion' power, 'consumer pull' power and 'loyalty' power.

In simple marketing terms, the model states that how many consumers a brand is likely to gain in the future depends on how many consumers prefer the brand today, how many are likely to switch-in to the brand and how many are likely to continue staying with the brand.

Reading the charts
The relative position of the brands in the adjacent graph needs to be understood and interpreted in two different ways:

• First, the 'position' of the brand falling on either side of the diagonal and in any of the four quadrants. This position represents a brand's 'performance' on the measured attribute (brand persuasion, brand pull, brand loyalty or brand momentux).
• The second way to interpret the graph is to look at the brand's relative positions along the diagonal starting from the bottom to the top. This reflects the 'size' of the brand in the market place for the measured attribute (brand persuasion, brand pull, brand loyalty or brand momentux). The higher is a brand positioned along the diagonal towards the top, the higher is its share ('size') for that parameter and a bigger player it is on that parameter in the market place.

Reading brand momentum
The brand falling on the left of the diagonal is being driven more by its 'mass' (current cumulative consumer base) than by its the speed accelerators (current marketing performance), ie Market Share Driven. It means the brand is 'slowing down' in the race for the future.

In contrast, the brand falling on the right of the diagonal is being driven more by 'speed accelerators' but has a correspondingly lower cumulative consumer base currently, which is Mind Share Driven. It means the brand is 'gearing up' for the race for the future.

Reading brand persuasion 
If the brand falls on the left of the diagonal, it means that its conversion from brand recall to intention to buy is relatively lower. This implies that the brand has been less effective in persuading the consumer who recalled the brand to also think of buying the brand (for whatever reasons).

On the other hand, for a brand which falls on the right of the diagonal, more consumers are thinking of buying the brand than recalling it. It implies that the brand has been relatively more effective in persuading the consumers to not just think about it per se but to think about buying it (for whatever reasons).

Reading brand pull
The brand falling on the left of the diagonal has more consumers leaving the brand than the number of consumers switching-in to the brand. It means the brand is a 'net loser' of consumers, is losing consumer pull and is more vulnerable in the market place.

In contrast, the brand falling on the right of the diagonal is gaining more consumers than those leaving the brand. It means the brand is a 'net gainer' of consumers, is gaining consumer pull and is progressing steadily in the market place.

Reading brand-switch matrix
The brand-switch matrix is a simple one glance tracking of any brand's switch-ins, switch-outs and loyalty performance. It is essentially a cross-matrix of responses to two questions asked in the survey.

The first, “Which brand do you currently own?” Note that if they owned multiple brands, then the primary brand was recorded.

The second, “If you were to buy or recommend the same product in the next six months, which brand would you buy/recommend?”

All figures in the matrix are percentages of those who currently own the brand mentioned in the rows and likely to buy the brand mentioned in the columns.

The 'diagonal' cells represent the loyal consumer base of the brand. That is, those who own a given brand and said that they will buy/recommend the same brand. On the left is the current ownership; on the right, are future choices.

Read along any row and you will get the shift-outs 'from' the brand to the other brands mentioned in the columns. Read along any column and you will get the shifts 'into' the brand from the other brands mentioned in the rows.

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