Do Consumers Trust the Microsoft Brand?
March 31, 2006 | by Geoff Duncan
Forrester Research's 2005 Technology Brand Scorecard ranks Microsoft's "brand trust" 20th out of 22 consumer electronics and computer makers.
Would you buy a used car from this company? How about a portable electronics device? Forrester Research's2005 Technology Brand Scorecard evaluated the "brand trust" reported by 4,732 U.S. households during September and October 2005 regarding 48 technology brands, 22 of which were "device brands" including companies like Apple Computer, Sony, Intel, Nintendo, and Panasonic. While the study found that Sony, Panasonic, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft have the highest brand adoption—meaning, respondents reported owning products from those companies—only HP cracked the top five in terms of brand trust, and Microsoft brought up the rear in terms of brand trust and was ranked 20th out of the 22 companies overall. Microsoft was also the only company cited as having a negative brand potential, as measured by its respondents aspiring to use its products mine current users at risk of defection. "One measure of consumers' dissatisfaction with Microsoft is seen in the 5.4 million households that give it a brand trust score of 1 [distrust a lot] or 2 [distrust a bit]. Compared with all Microsoft users, these at-risk users have higher income, are much more likely to be male, and are bigger online spenders. [...] These households know they run Microsoft software but would be just as happy to leave it behind—if they could." Also scoring poorly: Gateway and LG Electronics. Among the top-scoring companies? Dell, Apple, and (surprisingly) Bose lead the trust ratings, while Bose, Dell, IBM, Pioneer, Zenith, and Philips were found to have the most "brand potential" in terms of being able to grow their businesses by appealing to mainstream consumers.
Post Your Comment...Comments
robT on Mar 31st, 2006 at 5:54 PM:
6 years with out touching their web browser is microsoft's way of telling the consumer "**** you"
Jackson Metcalf on Mar 31st, 2006 at 9:05 PM:
I am a Mac user; however, I think Office for Mac is a great piece of software and I wish the rest of Microsoft's software was built to that standard. I think Microsoft's issue is that they own the market, they don't have to innovate so they're able to produce good but not great products for the mass market. I would like to see more cooperation between companies like Apple and Microsoft to create cutting-edge, cross-platform products. I am a little more hesitant with my Dell notebook than I am with my Powerbook, but with a reasonable knowledge of PCs I've never had a real issue with the OS or software... I think Microsoft does a pretty decent job, I just prefer OS X.
Jason on Apr 1st, 2006 at 8:58 AM:
I don't see why everyone is so against Microsoft. Could it be that they have taken significant measures to stop piracy of their software? What, you thieving *******s don't feel that you should pay for software that someone else spend time and money developing? Just accept the fact that MS is the best out there. I have no problems with the company at all. All their products work fine and dandy for me.
Jennifer East on Apr 1st, 2006 at 2:07 PM:
Microsoft Office for PC's is just awful! Their customer serivce is terrible, the tech suport you have to pay for in advance to tell a tech what bugs there are in their product and they have NO SOLUTIONS, NONE, just that "they are working on it!" Their tech's must be outsourced as one I could tell was putting me on hold to read the manual on the problem! When I asked to be tranfered to a Supervisor in Microsoft Outlook Express at MICROSOFT headquarters and not in INDIA - he hung up on me!
The tech support people they use do not know the product, and you are paying $35.00 an incident!
Freddie Montana on Apr 2nd, 2006 at 4:26 PM:
Absolutely love the company: have every OS from Win95 to XP and every version of Office including development software and other MS stuff BUT I really do not have a need of them. I converted all my computers to GNU/Linux -oh, about two, three years ago...
Craig on Apr 3rd, 2006 at 3:41 AM:
To quote the comment above:
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I don't see why everyone is so against Microsoft. Could it be that they have taken significant measures to stop piracy of their software? What, you thieving *******s don't feel that you should pay for software that someone else spend time and money developing? Just accept the fact that MS is the best out there. I have no problems with the company at all. All their products work fine and dandy for me.
-----
You clearly fail to see the monopolistic activity that microsoft enganges in (fact, look at the rulings by the European and South Korean courts). There is little choice in the OS market, and it is not helped by the fact that Windows is flung in peoples faces by OEM vendors everywhere, this is damaging to us the consumers, and feeds the greedy we call Microsoft. Would the poster please care to comment on whether they have actually installed windows XP on a raw disk, not so simple, yet most don't need to worry about that at first as it is already preinstalled, forced on you by many vandors! Well that is until it breaks, and it tends to. Windows 98, an excellent OS I never had to reinstall it once, I can't say the same for XP, looks like the strategy shifted towards trapping you in, bleeding more money out of you if they can!
Rob on Apr 3rd, 2006 at 1:46 PM:
@Jason
I started to do a long post about how I don't pirate software, etc., when I noticed the date of your post. At that point, I realized your post was just a bad April Fool's joke. Really, that's not even funny.
helios on Apr 3rd, 2006 at 8:21 PM:
"I don't see why everyone is so against Microsoft. Could it be that they have taken significant measures to stop piracy of their software? What, you thieving *******s don't feel that you should pay for software that someone else spend time and money developing? Just accept the fact that MS is the best out there. I have no problems with the company at all. All their products work fine and dandy for me."
This is a WONDERFUL piece of satire. Jason, you really ought to seriously think about writing like this professionally! I mean, I split my sides and tears ran so heavily I had to stop reading. I have not laughed this hard in ages. But I warn you to be careful, there may be someone out there that takes you seriously. No, really...I wouldn't want anyone to think you actually supported a corporation that built its foundation on stolen code and illegal business practices. I mean, hey, there really might be someone who actually thinks you are serious. The fact that they produced the most insecure operating system ever designed, then had the audacity to begin charging their customers for software to fix their original code...well, you can see where this could lead you into trouble. There are some people that are not very bright and actually think you mean this...
Besides, most people only steal MS software for a short period of time, until they discover a Linux/Unix based system. Once they do that, they wouldn't even consider having MS software on their machines, even stolen. With the wit you reveal with the above satire, I am sure you arrived at this place in your computing life long before many of us.
Congratulations. Hey, I did hear that The Onion was hiring. You might look into it.
helios
Jason on Apr 4th, 2006 at 2:21 PM:
Craig must be a dunce. I have installed XP Home and Pro numerous times, along with 3x, 9x, and Server 2003....on brand new hard drives. If you find it difficult to install the OS, maybe you should give computers a rest for a while. You can't follow the simple onscreen instructions? XP is far superior to 9x. I never get blue screens or other errors on it like I did with 9x. Also, MS is not a European country or South Korean company. Why do we care what they rule? They are so damn Anti-American, that they gladly jump on any chance to make us look bad.
No, Rob, it wasn't an april fools joke, as the only people that you see bashing MS are Linux users who don't feel that they should pay for anything.
helios, from what I hear, it was an inadequate contract from the OTHER company that ALLOWED MS to duplicate (not steal) the windows OS and sell it.
Now, this article is a bit too far back on digg.com, so I probably won't be comming back any more. Good day.
Steve on Apr 5th, 2006 at 12:18 AM:
European and South Korean courts don't make sense. How can they limit and ship Windows without Media Player and Messenger.. As a consumer, I would love it if my OS is preloaded with many features.
I don't know about Tiger, why don't they ask Apple to ship its OS without iTunes and iChat.
Correct me if i am wrong...
pcfixaren on Apr 6th, 2006 at 7:37 AM:
The thing whith microsoft is that ewery time you buy a computer from one of the OEM dealers.
It is like buying a car and getting a scrappy carawan with a leaking roof that you have to pay extra for included wether you like it or not.
if you say to the cardealer that "I dont want to pay for this scrappy peace of junk. I want this other carawan that is modern and has a roof that dosnt leak" you end up paying extra just to get rid of the scrappy on. This is what we in the computer business calls a "Windows tax"
pcfixaren on Apr 6th, 2006 at 7:37 AM:
The thing whith microsoft is that ewery time you buy a computer from one of the OEM dealers.
It is like buying a car and getting a scrappy carawan with a leaking roof that you have to pay extra for included wether you like it or not.
if you say to the cardealer that "I dont want to pay for this scrappy peace of junk. I want this other carawan that is modern and has a roof that dosnt leak" you end up paying extra just to get rid of the scrappy on. This is what we in the computer business calls a "Windows tax"
You see windows is that scrappy old carawan that no one wants but you end up paying for wether you like it or not and that kills the competiiton totaly
this couldbeone of many eplanations way pepole dont trust microsoft and there products
Mike on Apr 24th, 2006 at 7:06 AM:
Microsoft is crap, I like XP and thats it. If you were the worlds richest man you'd act like a jackass too and not bother to come up with something totally original that hasn't been copied from anyone else.
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Bill on Mar 31st, 2006 at 4:25 PM:
Anyone suprised? Microsoft only cares for themselves, they are so transparent that everyone sees it.