Stage 2:
Based on the initial generated list, a survey was conducted amongst 8,000 plus respondents from 29 States and one Union Territory (Delhi) of India.
Two structured questionnaires were formed and one-on-one interviews were carried out in the abovementioned geographical locations. The ten factors for which responses were procured for each surveyed IT and e-commerce brand from the 8,000 plus respondents were as follows: Brand recall, brand awareness, brand preference, brand image, brand performance, brand association, brand trust, brand sustainability, brand loyalty and brand positioning.
For factoring out specific characteristics, additional factors with tested weightage with respect to “brand gross market value” was utilised for the listing of IT Giants, and “brand admiration” was utilised for the listing of Most Admired E-commerce Companies. In order to avoid sequential bias, the order of the enterprises was changed for each of the surveyed geographies. Each State was divided into four zones – namely north, south, east and west – to ensure distributed coverage within the State in terms of the target audience.
The respondents covered were classified as both B2C consumers and B2B consumers, to ensure appropriate response strength for all the brands being researched. The respondents rated each of the brands on the given parameters on a scale of 1-5 (where 1 stood for minimum and 5 for maximum on each respective parameter).
Stage 3:
The results from Stage 2 were put through proprietary, stochastic, factor-analysis models to ensure appropriate filtering and tabulation of the abovementioned companies. From the list of enterprises shortlisted in Stage 2, a further sorting was implemented to filter out companies that qualified above the stochastically determined 4Ps B&M Factor Index.
From this list, the top 100 IT Giants and the top 100 Most Admired E-commerce Companies were chosen. This is the listing that you will witness in the upcoming pages of this magazine.