How successful are IT Brands?

The real success of a brand is not realized by how many consumers currently
own it, but also by what it does to remain successful in the future. That's
because current ownership is only a projection of the efforts put in by a brand
in the past. It's a feel good factor at best that all those efforts have really
paid off. But unless those efforts are sustained, it won't enjoy the same level
of ownership in the future.

Over the years, we've been tracking how successful various IT brands have
been amongst their target audience. Our methodology for measuring this success
has also evolved over the years. Earlier we used to measure success by
identifying the key IT brands that users are likely to purchase in the near
future. This gave a simple and straightforward ranking of various brands by the
intention to purchase.

Later, we evolved the methodology further to also track brand loyalty, i.e.
how many existing customers of a particular brand are likely to continue using
it and how many will shift to other brands. This helped us track changes in
brand preferences. Over the recent past, we've evolved this methodology even
further to understand how persuasive different brands are, what sort of a pull
do they enjoy, and lastly, based on these two parameters and the current
ownership of the brand, we determine the future readiness of the brand. In other
words, we try to predict what sort of a consumer share is it likely to enjoy in
the future, given its current situation. This gives a more accurate picture of a
brand's success.

Anil Chopra, Editor anilc@cybermedia.co.in

There are a couple of interesting changes we've observed in the buyers'
preferences this year over the last. For one, there's less uncertainty in the
buyers' minds about which brands are they likely to purchase in the future. Last
year, there was a lot of uncertainty on this front.

We have another very interesting observation from the results as well.
There's no slow down in the intention to purchase different IT brands. In fact,
this time, we noticed an increase in the number of CIOs who're likely to
purchase IT brands across all 25 categories we tracked in the enterprise IT
brands category. On an average there was a 25% increase across all categories.

So it's only natural to assume that if the intention to purchase exists among
more people, there is going to be more buying happening in the market as
compared to last year.

These are some of the things we've tracked in our story on India's favorite
IT brands this time. Plus, we've honored the most future ready brands with the
coveted Users' Choice Award. And of course, there's a buying guide that goes
beyond perceptions and into hardcore aspects of what to look for when purchasing
IT products and services. I look forward to your feedback. Enjoy reading this
issue.