HP: MNC Brand of the year

HP replaces Microsoft as the MNC Brand of the Year. Microsoft is pushed down to second place, sharing it with IBM, who rises up the ranking by one place. Cisco moves up two places to number four.

The methodology used was the same as for the Indian Brand of the Year. In fact, both lists were administered combined for ease of response. For a quick recap, five questions were asked about the respondents association with a brand. A brand had to get an affirmative answer at each stage for the next question to be asked. The final index and rank is on the sum of individual affirmative responses. The final scores have been used in determining the rankings. 

There has been a full reorganization this year of the MNC Top 20 list. Only Intel remains steady at the fifth place. Rising security concerns have ensured that Symantec and McAfee make it to the list at number 10 and number 16, respectively. Similarly, Linux vendor RedHat also makes their entry at number 15. Going off the top 20 from last year are LG, Acer, Novell and Canon. The fourth entrant to the list is SAP at number 18.

HP got top rankings in Relevance, Trust and Bonding, while Microsoft topped the Familiar list and IBM the Heard list. One surprising bit was that Epson topped the Heard list along with IBM. In spite of that, Epson dropped one place from last year to end ninth overall.

Intel improved its standing by two places, while Sun made an improvement of seven positions compared to last year, from 19 to 12. Of the brands that were on the Top 20 list last year, this is the most significant improvement recorded by any. Samsung, on the other hand, dropped from fourth place last year to eleventh position this time. Is Samsung being increasingly seen as a personal products company? 

Yet another interesting point worth pointing out is that the first seven positions are exactly the same in the Trust and Bonding lists.
Coincidence?