2009

Knowledge Partner:

Deepak Goel :
deepak.goel@drizzlin.com

[THE TOPLINES:MOST ADMIRED

MOBILE SERVICE ONLINE]
Research to identify the most admired mobile service brand online.

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Objective:
To identify the most admired mobile service brand in the Indian Online Space. Admiration was defined as
having a negative or a positive sentiment towards different aspects of the brand including:
Product/services: This includes conversations related to the different packages and value
added services that the brand provides
Tariffs
Tariffs/billing: Includes conversations which talks about the calling/sms rates for various
offers and billing statements.
Ads/promotions: Includes conversations around marketing campaigns and TVCs.
Customer Service: This includes conversations where customers and prospective customers
interacted with the brand
Network Coverage:
Coverage: This deals with conversations regarding the coverage and network
strength of the mobile service provider.
Brand Affinity: Conversations where the brand has been praised without reference to any
particular product or service
The Telecom brands covered for the purpose of the survey are:
1. Airtel
2. Vodafone
3. Idea Cellular
4. Tata Indicom
5. Aircel
6. Reliance Mobile
7. BSNL Mobile
8. MTNL
9. Spice Mobile
10. Loop Mobile

The Methodology
6 venue types were chosen for the purpose of the survey which are as follows:
1. Blogs
2. Micro blogs: Twitter
3. Social Networks: Facebook and Orkut
4. Forums
5. Video Sharing: YouTube
6. Consumer review sites: Mouthshut
Purely Complaint venues such as consumercomplaints.in and complaintsboard.com were ignored for
the purpose of this survey, to avoid the negative skew in conversations

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Search terms were assigned to identify primary conversations for each of the brands. The search terms
used for each brand were as follows:
Brand
Search Term
Airtel

Airtel

Vodafone

Vodafone India

Idea Cellular

Idea Cellular

Tata Indicom

Tata Indicom

Aircel

Aircel

Reliance Mobile

Reliance
Mobile

BSNL Mobile

BSNL Mobile

MTNL

MTNL

Spice Mobile

Spice Mobile

Loop Mobile

Loop Mobile

For each of the venues, Google searches were conducted with advanced operators. For Orkut.com,
however, site specific searches were conducted, owing to the private nature of the social network.
The Universe of conversations considered for the purpose of the survey was 51,902,650.
For each search term on each venue, the top 10 pages (with 10 results each) were audited to arrive at a
total of 700 conversations per venue and a total of 7000 conversations.
Of the 7000 conversations, relevant conversations (defined as ones expressing a personal opinion and
showing an affinity towards one or multiple aspects of the brand) were identified to arrive at a total of
1631 conversations.
No brand initiated conversations and conversations pertaining to branded physical products (such as
data cards) were considered for the purpose of the survey.
Each conversation audited was assigned a tonality score which was used to measure overall admiration
for a brand. Negative tonality conversations were given a score of -1; Positive tonality conversations were
given a score of +1.
For conversations having multiple messaging parameters and therefore, multiple tonalities, each of the
identified parameters was assigned a positive or a negative score and an overall score was assigned based
on whether the conversation still seemed to suggest an affinity or dislike for the brand.

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For calculation of the overall admiration score, the sum of scores for each brand was computed. A
weightage was also assigned to the brands, based on Expected Conversations v/s Actual Conversations
found. This weightage multiplied by the score of each brand, gave the final admiration score for each
brand.
The Overall score for the brand, determined the Most Admired Mobile Service Brand Online
Admiration scores were also calculated for each individual parameter across the 10 brands to identify the
top brands. This score was calculated by assigning weights, based on conversations around the
parameter, for each brand.

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The Key Findings

Vodafone has been recognized as the most admired mobile service brand online in India. This feat has
been achieved through its strong branding and advertising efforts both in the offline and online
mediums.
The final rankings were determined as follows:

Brand
Vodafone
Tata Indicom
Aircel
BSNL Mobile
Airtel
Idea Cellular
MTNL
Spice Mobile
Loop Mobile
Reliance Mobile

Score
117.57
101.12
59.76
13.11
9.71
3.73
1.59
-2.21
-33.48
-47.9

BSNL Mobile has scored highest in admiration for products and services while Vodafone appeared at
the bottom of the stack.
In the context of Tariffs and Billing, BSNL Mobile took the top honors while Airtel lagged at the
bottom.
Vodafone scored the highest in terms of admiration for ads and promotional messaging. Here BSNL
Mobile scored the lowest.
Tata Indicom scored the highest in network coverage while Loop Mobile was the laggard in this space.
MTNL scored the highest in customer service, while Vodafone was rated to have the worst customer
service.
Tata Indicom scores the highest in brand affinity whereas Aircel scores the lowest.
While MTNL and BSNL Mobile scored high on individual parameters, people talking of ads and
promotions around brands was far higher, propelling active advertising brands like Vodafone, Aircel and
Airtel to the top.
Facebook, despite its phenomenal growth in the Indian online space, still does not see much activity by
the telecom brands. Apart from Tata Indicom and Vodafone, all the other brands had negligible
presence on the platform.
83% of the conversations, in which the gender could be clearly deduced, were found to be by men, while
only 6% of these conversations were by women.

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The highest number of conversations was found to be around Ads and promotions, particularly on
YouTube and Twitter.

Most Admired Mobile Service Brands Online

120
100
80

Score

60
40
20
0
-20
-40
-60
Vodafone
Score

117.57

TATA
Indicom
101.12

Aircel
59.76

BSNL
Mobile
13.11

Airtel
9.71

Idea
Cellular
3.73

MTNL
1.59

Spice
Mobile
-2.21

Loop
Mobile
-33.48

Reliance
Mobile
-47.9