Reputation Benchmark Study for Auto (Car) Sector launched

bluebytes News Private Ltd., (bluebytes) India’s leading news research agency launched the inaugural issue of its Reputation Benchmark Study for the Auto (Cars) Sector in the city today. The study, a result of over 11,000 hours of research, involved analysis of more than 75,000 news articles related to the Auto (Cars) sector for the period from October 2011 to March 2012. The study has ranked Maruti Suzuki as the Most Reputed Car Company and Mahindra XUV 500 as the Most Reputed Car Brand.

bluebytes, part of the Comniscient Group, was started in 2006 with the objective of researching news to help organizations analyze its implications to brands, Piyush Jain, Business Head, bluebytes explained. He further elaborated on the imperative for measuring reputation and said, “Reputation is of paramount importance in an information filled world. It helps us to calibrate all our choices. Reputation is defined as transmitted feelings of respect, and news is one such critical transmitter. As a news research agency, we use technology and knowledge to analyze news on thirty different parameters before to arrive at a Reputation Score. These car companies and brands have been ranked on the basis of this Reputation Rank”. The Auto (Car) Reputation Benchmark is the first in a series of reports that bluebytes is planning to publish across various sectors.

The average percentage difference between Reputation Scores of the first three ranked car companies is a steep 26%. The gap between 3rd (Tata Motors) and 4th ranked companies (Hyundai) is in single digits, but the Reputation Score differences between 5th (Audi) and 6th (Mercedes) is a phenomenal 48%.

Of the 200 different brands that featured from these 19 car companies, the first place goes to the latest blockbuster from the Mahindra & Mahindra stable - XUV 500. Tata Nano ranks as the second most Reputed car brand in India, though the XUV has a whooping lead of 74% over it.

“In this report we understand Reputation by classifying, measuring and understanding what the media Transmitters are saying about the company or brand, as if they were radio waves that could be tapped into for reception”, Jain reiterated.

The 75,000 articles tracked were in English and Hindi, and the news ink they received was nearly 25 million square centimeters, more ink than in a single broadsheet newspaper if one were to accumulate it continuously for more than 8½ years.