For brand of the year, we defined two sub categories, Indian brands and multinational brands. Similarly, we’ve introduced an award for the best product of the year.
Before we go into the methodology and the winners themselves, here are some definitions. The term brand has been used as a slightly broad concept. Since many companies have multiple brands, we have used the company names themselves as brand icons, instead of the individual sub brands. If any respondent mentioned any sub brand, it has been added back to the company brand. We defined an IT brand as one which has a large presence in IT, compared to the rest of its portfolio. Thus, though BPL sells a range of PCs under the BPL brand, it would not qualify because its IT operations are very small compared to its other operations. We defined an Indian brand as one that has its headquarters and a major share of operations in India. So, a multinational brand is naturally one that has its headquarters and major share of operations outside India.
Throughout the Users’ Choice, we have kept HP and Compaq separate. This is because when the survey was on, the two were still separate, and were selling their respective brands.
Identifying the best brands
On behalf of PCQuest, IMRB designed a simple and elegant method to rate the brands. They constructed a simple ladder against which IT brands were tested. The five steps in the ladder are as follows.
Product of the Year: Windows XP |
|
Products | Score |
Windows XP | 100 |
Pentium 4 | 84 |
.Net | 20 |
Oracle 9i | 16 |
Awareness. Have I heard of this brand?
Familiarity. Do I know this brand?
Relevance. Is this brand for me?
Trust. Do I believe in this brand?
Bonding. Do I like this brand a lot)?
To calculate the brand popularity scores, the respondents were asked to specify, for each of the brands (indicated in the questionnaire/on the show card or one that they named), the following.
l Whether they were aware of the brand or not?
l Whether they were familiar with what products/services, the brand is associated with?
l Whether they felt that the respective brand was likely to be of any relevance to them?
l Whether they felt that they could trust in the respective brand?
l Whether they felt they liked the brand a lot?
MNC Brand brand of the Year: Microsoft |
||
Rank | Brand |
Scrore |
1 | Microsoft | 96 |
2 | Hewlett | 93 |
3 | Samsung | 89 |
4 | Compaq | 84 |
5 | IBM | 77 |
6 | Intel | 77 |
7 | Seagate | 73 |
8 | LG | 71 |
9 | Epson | 66 |
10 | Oracle | 62 |
Quite clearly, a respondent was asked the next question only if he had answered the previous one in affirmative. For example, the respondent was asked whether he felt that the respective brand was likely to be of any relevance to him, only if he was familiar with the products/services the brand was associated with.
Rating process
A fairly straightforward rating method was used to identify the winner. At each step, the brand that got the most ratings got 100 points and the other brands were given proportionate ratings as per the response. The overall rating for a brand was a cumulative addition of the five step ratings. Thus, a brand which would have been rated the most at each of the step would have got 500 points (which has again been re-scaled to 100 for convenience sake).
Winners
Wipro topped all the voter segments: corporate, SME, developer and homes. HCL was number two in corporates and households and number three in SME and developer constituencies.
A big surprise is Tally at number three. Tally’s score is the exact reverse of HCL, number two with SME and developers and number three with corporate and households! Similarly, Microtek, with fourth place standing with corporates and SMEs (seventh place with software houses and fifth with households) comes out fourth overall.
Indian brand of the Year: Wipro |
||
Rank | Brand | Scrore |
1 | Wipro | 99 |
2 | HCL | 88 |
3 | Tally | 86 |
4 | Microtech | 68 |
5 | Infosys | 63 |
6 | Zenith | 59 |
7 | TVSE | 55 |
8 | Amkette | 53 |
9 | Tata Infotech |
49 |
10 | TCS | 39 |
Infosys, which you would have expected to have a higher ranking than the overall fifth place it got, could blame the seventh position it got with corporates and eighth position with SMEs (fourth with software houses and households) for it.
The decider here has been the home segment. For example, HP topped in corporate, SME and developer markets, with Microsoft a close second. In the home segment, while Microsoft was the first, HP could come only third, thus yielding the crown to Microsoft.
Samsung was number two in the home market and could have done better than its current third place, but for the fact that it could manage only sixth position with the development houses.
Seagate is perhaps a surprising entry at sixth place, given the product range and advertising spend of the rest of the top ten.
But then perhaps the fact that Seagate has been in the country and visible for longer than most of the others explains that.
Windows XP topped in corporates, SMEs and development houses, while the Pentium 4 topped amongst home voters. .Net got equal support from homes and developers, but failed to enthuse the corporate and SME voters. Oracle 9i, meanwhile, got the bulk of its support from software houses.