POWERBRANDS of India will be launched as a book by Planman Media Pvt. Ltd. in association with the Indian Council for Market Research (ICMR).

POWERBRANDS of India will list the top 200 brands of India. The listing however, is based on a perception based survey conducted by ICMR along with the IIPM Think Tank. The parameters are based on high recall value, brand awareness, brand image and perception, brand performance and brand association.

The survey was conducted in different stages:

Stage 1: The survey was initiated by preparing a list of 40,000 (the list included national, international and regional brands) brands across India under 40 different categories and 108 sub-categories. The initial list of 1,500 brands was created based on the reach, availability, demand and growth (in at least the four metros and Bengaluru).

A survey was conducted amongst 10,000 respondents based on the parameters of Brand Awareness and Brand Preference in the cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Chandigarh. The respondents were asked to select the brands based on the parameters of Brand Awareness and Brand Preference. Based on the frequency of the brands selected under these parameters the ICMR team short listed the top 200 brands.

Stage 2: The second phase of the study was initiated after tabulating the top 200 brands. A structured questionnaire was formed and one-on-one interviews were carried out with 6000 respondents in 16 cities (Delhi, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Lucknow, Indore, Bhubaneswar, Cochin, Dehradun, Pune and Chennai) across India. In order to avoid any biasness, the order of the brands was changed for each of the cities.  Each of the cities was divided into 4 zones namely North, South, East and West to ensure complete coverage of the city in terms of the target audience. The number of respondents covered was divided based on SEC (Socioeconomic classification – based on the education and occupation) and the number of male and female respondents. Apart from this the monthly income of the respondents was also taken into consideration. In case of the respondents such as housewives, students etc. the monthly income of the Chief Wage Earner (CWE-Head of Household) has been taken into account. Respondent profiling was laid down for each of the categories prior to the initiation of the survey.

This survey took into account the Brand Equity of the brands through the parameters of Brand Image & Perception, Brand Performance, Brand Loyalty, Brand Awareness and the Brand Association (The parameter of Brand performance and Brand association was rated by the editorial team of Planman Media and IIPM Think Tank). The respondents rated each of the brands on the given parameters on a scale of 1-5 (where 1 is low and 5 is high on the parameter).

Stage 3: Based on the results from Stage 2, the top 200 brands across the different categories were selected.

In order to signify the relevance of a brand being designated as a POWERBRAND, another survey was conducted to calculate the scores for the Powermeter for each of the brands. The broad parameters taken under consideration were Brand Recall, Legacy/Goodwill of the brand and Brand Impact. Based on the number of brands registered under each category, ICMR conducted a survey amongst a sample size of 5000 consumers in 10 cities pan India (the respondent profiling was done individually for the categories). The technique of Simple Random and Snowball sampling – (for certain categories) was used for the survey. Each of the 3 above mentioned parameters was further sub-divided into parameters wherein the scores for the sub-parameters were consolidated to give the final score.

The survey generated the scores for each brand on the parameters of Brand Recall, Brand Legacy/Goodwill and Brand Impact.

Apart from the Powermeter, the brands were categorized based on the follower- ship index (loyalty), lifecycle meter (classification into 3 zones) and the peeping toms (new entrants and brands posing as a threat to other brands).