India's Most Wanted IT Brands...

DVD Combo Drives

Sustaining the momentum in this high volume, low margin market is quite a

challenge. The brand that has the highest momentum when it comes to DVD Combo

drives is Sony, followed by Samsung and then LG. Other brands that make an

appearance here are Creative, Iomega and Philips.

Interestingly, there's still one player in this category that has perhaps

stopped selling optical drives in the market. That company is Creative, which

was one of the initial companies to enter this space. It's surprising to see

the momentum this company has created in the market for so many years.

Iomega, on the other hand, seems to have a lower current ownership, but still

high on momentum. 

In fact, Iomega still has a high persuasion value. It has lost a little bit

of mind space, but the likelihood of users buying is still high, meaning the

brand is still persuasive. Creative is another brand that's high on

persuasion. Sony and LG are also in a similar position with a higher top of mind

recall and more people likely to buy them. Samsung is a little less persuasive

compared to the others and is sitting just on the diagonal as can be seen in



the graph.

Of all the brands, Sony enjoyed the maximum brand pull. More users prefer to

shift to Sony from any other competitive brand than users moving away from it.

All the remaining brands also showed a healthy brand pull from competing brands,

but nearly in similar ratios. Being such a fast moving market, this is bound to

happen. This can be clearly seen from the brand shift matrix.

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

None of the brands other than Sony have a brand loyalty of greater than 70%.

All these brands seem to be losing part of their existing customers to other

competing brands. Sony was the only brand to have a brand



loyalty of 90%.

Hard Drives

Hard Drives

There are two extremes in this segment. On one side is Seagate that has the

highest brand momentum, meaning it's got great future potential. On the other

side is Western Digital, which doesn't have a high market share, and needs a

lot of work to pick up market share in the future. Samsung follows Seagate,

while Hitachi leads Western Digital.

Surprisingly, the brand persuasion index for Western Digital is the highest.

This is because the number of respondents who were inclined to buy it were more

than those who had this brand on top of their minds. So Western Digital

definitely needs to do something about taking its brand awareness up, if it

wants to compete with the likes of Samsung and Seagate. Hitachi is the other

hard drive brand that needs to work on creating its brand awareness. In fact,

the top of mind recall for Hitachi was even lower than Western Digital, but the

moment the respondents were given a choice, they preferred to buy the drive.

Seagate, of course, is on the other extreme with high top of mind recall as well

as high inclination to purchase from users. Samsung falls somewhere in between

and is poised to give Seagate a chase as there are more users who are likely to

buy it than those who can recall the brand name.

The situation in brand pull is exactly the reverse, with Seagate having the

highest number of users switching into it from competing brands. This is



followed by Hitachi and Western Digital. Samsung seems to be on the receiving
end with more switch-outs to competing brands than switch-ins.

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

The brand switch matrix makes things clearer. Seagate has the highest brand

loyalty with 93% of its existing users planning to stick to it. The rest are



divided amongst other brands. Samsung is at 61% brand loyalty, and losing 37% of
its users to Seagate. Hitachi and Western Digital have the lowest brand loyalty,

losing a major chunk of their existing users to Seagate and Samsung.

LCD Monitors

LCD Monitors

This is an action packed segment with lots of brands fighting it out, and

even more interesting is the fact that around 50% of the respondents don't

even own an LCD monitor. This shows the potential of this category. Samsung has

the highest brand momentum of all the brands, with LG close on



its heels, followed by Sony and ViewSonic.

LG, Sony and IBM/Lenovo seem to be amongst the most persuasive brands with

more users wanting to buy them than those having these on top of mind. They

definitely need to leverage this positioning.

Samsung, on the other hand, has a slightly lower brand persuasion index as

the ratio of people wanting to buy and people having it on top of their minds is

lower. NEC, Microtek, Sharp, Benq and HCL have a lower likelihood of buying than

top of mind recall.

While people have heard of these brands, but more action is required from

these vendors to persuade the users to buy them. Sony is enjoying the maximum

brand pull from competing brands, followed by LG. Besides these, other brands

like Samsung, HP-Compaq, IBM/ Lenovo, Philips, Apple, Acer and Benq are some

other brands with more switch ins happening from competition than switch out.

HCL, on the other hand, needs to be more careful as it's having more users

switching out than switching in.

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

Coming to brand loyalty, LG enjoys it the maximum at 77%. While it faces risk

of losing its existing customer base to all other leading brands, the threat is

highest from Sony and HP-Compaq. Sony is next with a brand loyalty of 75%, and

also faces risk from four other players. HCL, on the other hand has the lowest

brand loyalty, losing out at least 50% of its existing customers to Samsung.

HP-Compaq, IBM/Lenovo, and Philips all have a brand loyalty of less than 40%.

Acer is sitting at 60% brand loyalty.

Motherboards

Motherboards

The motherboard market is one market where brands must always keep brining

out the latest technology to stay in the race. Intel was the only brand that was

more mass driven, while all the remaining key motherboard brands were speed

driven.

This can be explained by the fact that Intel came up as the highest owned

brand in our survey. This was followed by Asus, Mercury and Gigabyte.



Intel also emerged as the most persuasive brand, wherein the number of users
intending to buy it were more than users having it on top of their mind.

Even Mercury, which has been fairly inactive in the market over the recent

two years, seems to be a persuasive brand. The



reason for this is simply that users not only have Mercury on top of their
minds, but there are more users who intend to buy it in the next six months.

From the brand pull graph, it's clearly visible that Intel is the only

brand that's pulling in a lot more competitive brands than giving way to

competition. Up next is Asus, with a similar pattern, though it is not as strong

as Intel.

Gigabyte and MSI are also there, but there are more users shifting out from

these brands than shifting in from their competition.

Intel enjoys the highest brand loyalty at 94%. It only faces slight

competition from Asus, with 6% of its existing customers wanting to shift to

that brand.

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

Asus, on the other hand has a lot to fear from Intel, with 41% of its

customers wanting to shift. Mercury's brand loyalty is fairly low at 25% and

65% of its customers want to shift to Intel over the next six months.

Gigabyte, on the other hand, has 33% brand loyalty, and faces a threat from

both Asus and Intel. A good 47% of its existing users from Gigabyte want to move

to Intel, while another 20% want to move to Asus.