India's Most Wanted IT Brands

Continued from page: 2

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Network Switches, Servers

Network Switches

The interesting trend we noticed in network switches was that all brands had nearly similar brand persuasion characteristics. They all have higher brand recall than the number of enterprises that are likely to buy them.

The brands that received a significant number of votes for current ownership, likelihood of buying, and top of mind recall were Cisco, D-Link, Nortel, and 3Com. The key marketing characteristic of all of these brands is better brand persuasion. They all need to be more persuasive. If we keep market share out of the picture, then 3Com seems to be the most persuasive brand, followed by Nortel, D-Link, and Cisco. There were more enterprises who had high brand recall for these brands than those who were likely to buy them.

Another noteworthy point in this segment is that none of the players seem to have strong enough brand pull. D-Link is the worst hit. It faces risk that its customers might shift to competing brands. Going further, 17% of its existing customers said that they're likely to move to Cisco. Another 21% were unsure of their plans on which network switch brand to buy. In fact, all the key players in this segment are likely to lose their market to Cisco. These include 10% of Nortel's existing customers and 33% of 3Com's customers. It's no wonder then that Cisco enjoyed a brand loyalty of 69%, with another 26% of its customers saying they were unsure of plans to shift to any brand in the next six months.

Highest top of mind recall: Cisco Highest current ownership: Cisco Most likely to buy: Cisco

The resultant brand momentum graph clearly indicates Cisco and D-Link are the leaders in current ownership. Cisco leads by a wide margin and sits in a very comfortable position due to high current ownership. D-Link needs to do something to prevent losing its existing customers to Cisco. For the remaining brands, the current ownership is far lower. The closest competition to D-Link and Cisco is Nortel, but even this brand needs to build up the momentum considerably if it wants to gain market share.

Servers

The survey results for this segment are quite interesting. While HP-Compaq and IBM have high top of mind recall and most enterprises are likely to buy the brands, it was Dell that came up as a more persuasive brand. That's because more respondents were likely to buy Dell servers than those who had recalled it as a top of mind brand. The situation was reverse for HP-Compaq and IBM, meaning that of the CIOs who had high top of mind recall for HP-Compaq and IBM, a lesser number expressed thier likelihood of buying these brands in the next six months.

So if better brand persuasion emerges as the key marketing issue for HP-Compaq and IBM, then for Dell it is brand recall.
Interestingly, possible switch-ins to HP-Compaq and IBM from competing brands is lower than the switch outs, thereby reducing their brand pull.

Here, IBM is the worst hit, while Dell has a relatively higher brand pull.

Dell enjoyed the highest brand loyalty among all brands, followed by IBM, HP-Compaq, and HCL in that order.

Possible switch outs of 6% of IBM owners to HP-Compaq makes IBM vulnerable. On the other hand, HP is likely to lose 7% of its customers to Dell.

Highest top of mind recall: HP-Compaq Highest current ownership: HP-Compaq Most likely to buy: HP-Compaq

Interestingly 28% of the total respondents were possibly unsure of their plans or the brands they would like to shift in to in next six months. These included 25% of HP-Compaq's existing customers, and 20% of IBM's. The probable reason for this unsurity is that server configurations change very fast, so organizations would prefer to choose a brand that offers the best deal at the time of buying.

The relative plotting of the Brand Momentum for these brands makes it clear that their high market share drives HP-Compaq and IBM servers against the competition. Dell on the other hand has got the momentum and is an accelerating brand. Other brands like Sun, Acer, and HCL had didn't have sufficient numbers for us to be able to pass any judgement about them.

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