YouGov launches BrandIndex, Sony tops in Saudi Arabia

This state of the art brand barometer, produced by YouGov, gathers the views of 750 Saudi and UAE consumers online each fortnight, across 200 brands.

Vivek Wagle, Research Director at YouGov, says:

"BrandIndex is the first of its kind. Until now only sluggish brand trackers which are run quarterly, or even annually have been available on the market. They belong to a different world, we now have 24 hour news channels and the internet where the health of a brand can change on a dime. A tool like this allows businesses to react much faster and with greater sensitivity."

At the apex of the brand barometer sits Sony with a BrandIndex score of 69 with Nokia and Google hot on its tail with scores of 67.3 and 66.3. Google, a usual champion in BrandIndex markets such as the UK and US, settles for third place in a culture deeply enthralled by consumer electronics.

Noteworthy among the top 10 brand performers is that a third include luxury car makers, Mercedes, BMW, and Lexus. Within the top 15 this proportion increases to over one third, indicating a strong valuation in the KSA towards automotive brands.

BrandIndex scores are aggregates of 6 profile indicators designed to measure the health of brand equity. These indicators are General Impression, Quality, Value for Money, Corporate Reputation, Satisfaction, and likeliness to Recommend. A brand's level of exposure in the media, public eye, and word of mouth is rated through a separate indicator, labelled Buzz, which is excluded from the overall BrandIndex score due to its high volatility.

"BrandIndex's emergence in Saudi and the UAE marks a milestone for the region as a whole," says Nassim Ghrayeb, CEO of YouGov Mena. "It affords our clients a new dimension to the transparency of the health of their brand portfolio."