Menlo Park, CA--With high scores in a popular annual survey related to resellers for sales of professional plasma displays, NEC claimed top spot in the overall composite rating--for the second year in a row.
The Reseller Survey, specific to North America, is conducted by Pacific Media Associates (PMA), a Menlo Park, CA-based market research firm that tracks the large-screen display market. The survey includes 25 points that cover marketing support, products, and after-sale support.
Aside from NEC, Electrograph and Hitachi also received high scores.
"Manufacturers go to great lengths to offer sales and marketing programs that are attractive to their resellers to assure that those resellers give their brands high priority during selling situations," said PMA's president, William Coggshall. "Although these three brands topped the list of our composite of the 25 different aspects, various different brands were tops in one or more of the individual aspects, with scores that indicated an overall high level of satisfaction by the resellers."
The survey ranked the 25 aspects according to their importance, so manufacturers scoring highly on the more important aspects boosted their overall composite score more than those who scored well on less important aspects. Since the report includes numerical ratings for each manufacturer for each aspect, manufacturers can learn if they are doing well on those aspects to which they have dedicated the most effort, and to see where they are lagging.
The individual top-rated companies (including only those with 10 or more responses) for the most important eight aspects include: Product Quality/Reliability, Pioneer; Product Price/Performance, Hitachi; Knowledgeable After-Sale Support Persons, NEC; After-Sale Return/Repair Programs, Electrograph; (Marketing Support) Capable Dealer Reps, Sony; On-Time Product Delivery, Electrograph; Responsive After-Sale Support Persons, Hitachi; and Product Availability, Electrograph.
The 2002 survey covered a broad range of facts, figures, and opinions from the 221 participating resellers, many of whom are among the largest in North America.
Pacific Media Associates' Large-Screen Displays Industry Service currently provides detailed worldwide quarterly updates on front projectors and the large-format flat panel markets, aside from newsletters on new product announcements, key industry developments, and the Reseller Survey.
