IBM bolts to top 10; Sony reigns in CE - discount house consumers' preferences for brand name consumer electronics products

Discount Store News, Oct 18, 1993

Sony continued its dominance as the consumer electronics brand most favored by discount shoppers, finishing first for the fifth year in a row in Discount Store News' annual Top Brands research, conducted by Leo J. Shapiro & Associates. But the real news was the strength of the IBM brand name, which rocketed into the Top 10 for the first time, illustrating the new importance of computer products to the CE category.

Discounts store shoppers are highly brand sensitive. More than eight out of 10 shoppers had a clear preference in the category, one of the highest such rates in the departments considered. However, shoppers were very uncertain that they would find their favored brand on a discounter's shelf and were highly unlikely to switch brands if they didn't find their favored brand.

On a scale of one to nine (nine meaning "certain of finding the brand"), shoppers gave a mean response of 6.67 when asked how certain they were that they could find their preferred brand(s) at their most often shopped discount store. That figure ranked near the bottom of the list of categories; only women's apparel did worse.

Asked if they would switch brands, six out of 10 said they would not; again, a high degree of brand loyalty makes it incumbent upon discounters to carry the most wanted brands. The same pattern continued when they were asked if they would consider private label; less than two in five said they'd even consider PL, the lowest such percentage of all categories, save cosmetics.

Sony's continued strong consumer franchise, coupled with its rising importance to discounters, makes it the only CE brand name to quality as a Power Brand (a term reserved for brands that perform strongly with both discount store managers and shoppers). This year, Sony's index rating was 241, the 15th highest figure among the considered brands. General Electric, RCA and Emerson narrowly missed Power Brand status. Emerson performed poorly with consumers, while the two Thompson brands fared relatively poorly with store managers.

While IBM was the major gainer in the survey, which garnered responses from nearly 300 consumers who shop regularly at discount stores, the largest loser was Nintendo, a perennial top three finisher. This year, the video game manufacturer dipped to a tie for ninth place.

There were very few variations in the rankings by age or shopping preference. Sony was stronger with younger consumers, but not to a great degree. However, younger shoppers (under 35) were only half as likely as others to mention Panasonic as a preferred brand. IBM scored with older shoppers. Predictably, those same shoppers didn't mention Nintendo or audio component manufacturer Pioneer even come.

Baby boomers were slightly less attracted to Sony than other shoppers, and that situation was even more pronounced with GE, Emerson and Zenith. AT&T, Nintendo, Eveready, Kodak and TDX performed better with these shoppers than they did on average.

There were no major variations among shoppers of different chains, apart from slightly higher than average preferences for Magnavox among Wal-Mart shoppers and GE among Target shoppers. Target shoppers were significantly less likely to mention Panasonic, and WalMart shoppers had a similar tendency with GE.

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