Whose ratings are these anyway?
In September 2006, the Media magazine brought out a substantive and impressive looking supplement encasing the list of the Top 1000 brands from Asia. The well presented list is based on a research study done by a market research agency in the region, covering 500 to 750 adults in each of the 9 markets in Asia. It is said that the human beings are always hungry for lists. There is something about the simple hierarchy and order of lists that appeals to the human mind. Lists possibly help to put some kind of order and comprehension in the usually chaotic world around us.
At the same time, publishing these lists carries a responsibility. After all they are a public statement about the relative worth of these brands and create a word-of-mouth for the different members in the list – though perhaps not always in the right target group.
What is the concept of a “best brand” anyway? Should it be conducted as a poll of consumer preferences or should it be something which is derived by asking a series of questions? Questions which measure the strength of the brand, the respect with which the consumer views them and the degree of affinity that the consumer feels for them. Experience with researching Asian consumers on a large range of products and issues is clearly indicative of the wisdom of deriving rather than asking. When we conduct a poll of consumer preference by directly asking them to name the best brands, are we getting brands which are really considered the best or merely the most salient?
Generating lists which cover more than one geography - e.g. Asia's best - brings in other complications. The most important of these possibly is weighting. As brands have different status in different markets, if you want to construct an aggregated picture you need to assign a weight to each market. What should be each market’s weight – should it be the total population of the market, the adult population, urban population, population above a certain income level – a hosts of possibilities arise. While theoretically it seems to make sense, if population is used as the weight, the Asia’s top 1000 would merely be a mix of the top brands in China and India. The findings from the smaller markets like Singapore and Taiwan would be such a small contributor that you might as well not survey them. The Media list shows Indomie from Indonesia a notch ahead of HSBC, Air Asia ahead of Singapore Airlines and Cathay, Starbucks beating Nike and Adidas. Some of these oddities makes one wonder about the methodology used and possibly the weighing scheme followed.
Lastly, while the issue of identifying the best brands within a category is difficult enough, producing a list running across categories is even a more daunting task. How does one take a disparate set of brands across different product categories, different target groups, ranging from universally consumed instant noodles to premium coffee house and toy stores and put them on the same pedestal and generate a hierarchy? Should you weight again by the sizes of the category, by the number of people who use each category or the affinity that the consumer feels with the category? Clearly no obvious answers are available. But the position of the brands in the list will vary depending on what approaches you use for these. Perhaps a debate on these issues would lead to lists which are easier to accept, better reflect the real prowess of these brands, and are more objective indicators of their performance.
At the same time, publishing these lists carries a responsibility. After all they are a public statement about the relative worth of these brands and create a word-of-mouth for the different members in the list – though perhaps not always in the right target group.
What is the concept of a “best brand” anyway? Should it be conducted as a poll of consumer preferences or should it be something which is derived by asking a series of questions? Questions which measure the strength of the brand, the respect with which the consumer views them and the degree of affinity that the consumer feels for them. Experience with researching Asian consumers on a large range of products and issues is clearly indicative of the wisdom of deriving rather than asking. When we conduct a poll of consumer preference by directly asking them to name the best brands, are we getting brands which are really considered the best or merely the most salient?
Generating lists which cover more than one geography - e.g. Asia's best - brings in other complications. The most important of these possibly is weighting. As brands have different status in different markets, if you want to construct an aggregated picture you need to assign a weight to each market. What should be each market’s weight – should it be the total population of the market, the adult population, urban population, population above a certain income level – a hosts of possibilities arise. While theoretically it seems to make sense, if population is used as the weight, the Asia’s top 1000 would merely be a mix of the top brands in China and India. The findings from the smaller markets like Singapore and Taiwan would be such a small contributor that you might as well not survey them. The Media list shows Indomie from Indonesia a notch ahead of HSBC, Air Asia ahead of Singapore Airlines and Cathay, Starbucks beating Nike and Adidas. Some of these oddities makes one wonder about the methodology used and possibly the weighing scheme followed.
Lastly, while the issue of identifying the best brands within a category is difficult enough, producing a list running across categories is even a more daunting task. How does one take a disparate set of brands across different product categories, different target groups, ranging from universally consumed instant noodles to premium coffee house and toy stores and put them on the same pedestal and generate a hierarchy? Should you weight again by the sizes of the category, by the number of people who use each category or the affinity that the consumer feels with the category? Clearly no obvious answers are available. But the position of the brands in the list will vary depending on what approaches you use for these. Perhaps a debate on these issues would lead to lists which are easier to accept, better reflect the real prowess of these brands, and are more objective indicators of their performance.
posted by Ashok Sethi at 2:00 AM
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