This is the eighth in a series of articles about some of the findings from the 2011 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS), a global study of broadcast industry trends, technology purchasing plans, and benchmarking of broadcast technology vendor brands. More than 8,000 people in 100+ countries took part in the 2011 BBS, making it the largest and most comprehensive market study ever done in the broadcast industry.
.
Each year, as part of the Big Broadcast Survey (BBS), we ask broadcast professionals worldwide to rank a variety of technology vendor brands on a wide range of metrics. We use this information to create a series of reports, which through benchmarking and industry “league tables” enable each vendor to understand its position in the market relative to the the industry as a whole as well as their company’s direct competitors.
In previous articles we wrote about the 2011 BBS Overall Brand Opinion League Table, the 2011 BBS Net Change in Overall Opinion League Table, the 2011 BBS Brand Opinion Leaders League Table, and 2011 BBS Broadcast Technology Vendor Innovation League Table.
.
This post follows on from the 2011 BBS Broadcast Technology Vendor Innovation League Table, by focusing on one of the most important metrics for any technology company – quality.
In an industry that prides itself on the fidelity of its sound and images, the perception of quality is a very important metric for broadcast technology vendors. Many vendors use quality as one of the key components of their market positioning, and customers often use technical performance and quality as a part of their procurement strategies.
To determine the market’s perception of the quality of broadcast technology vendors, respondents were asked to rank broadcast technology vendor brands for “Quality” on a scale of 1-10 – with 10 being best in the market, and 1 being worst in the market.
The top 30 ranked brands for overall opinion are shown below for the global sample of all respondents.
In all cases, these results are shown in alphabetical order, NOT in the order in which they were ranked in the study.
.
The 2011 BBS Broadcast Technology Vendor Quality League Table
.
As with previously published rankings, this list contains a broad mix of vendors including large and small firms; single product and multi-product firms; global and regional players; and audio and video technology providers.
In order to better understand what drives the perception of quality in the broadcast technology industry, let’s look deeper at the vendors on this list, beginning with the type of products produced by each vendor.
.
Frequency of Product Category – Audio Takes 4 of Top 7 Spots
What about the product categories themselves? Are some product categories inherently perceived as having higher quality? If so are these products judged differently than other types of products by customers who are evaluating them for purchase?
As shown in the chart below, there is a very broad range of product categories included in the 2011 BBS Broadcast Technology Vendor Quality League Table – vendors that make products in 23 of the 26 product categories that were covered in the study.
However, when one looks at the frequency of the product categories produced by these vendors, it’s immediately apparent that the top categories are audio products.
.
2011 BBS Quality League Table — Frequency of Product Categories:
.
The top two products categories for quality are both from the audio side of the business – microphones and audio consoles. In fact, four of the top seven product categories in this ranking are audio related, with only highly complex video products — video editing, camera lenses and ENG cameras — being included in this group. This is an interesting data point, especially when one considers that out of 26 product categories covered in the 2011 BBS, only five were in the audio space.
The other product categories that appear multiple times are clustered in the live production and studio environments, and include camera lenses, studio cameras, production switchers, production servers, test and measurement and video transport. Interestingly these products tend to be high ticket items that are produced by the industry’s larger vendors.
Since the industry’s largest vendors tend to operate in the most product categories, let’s evaluate the number of times each vendor appears in the 2011 BBS Broadcast Technology Vendor Quality League Table to see if there is a correlation between size of vendor / product range and the market’s perception of quality.
.
2011 BBS Quality League Table — Number of 2011 BBS Product Categories per Brand:
When considering what drives the perception of quality, one question to consider is which type of vendor appears more often in the above ranking – those that are focused on a single type of product, or large multi-product vendors.
While our research does not evaluate each product produced by every vendor, we do put vendors into categories based on their product lines. This gives a good representation of whether a particular vendor has a narrow or broad product-line-up.
The table below shows the number of 2011 BBS product categories produced by each brand (as defined by the segmentation used in the 2011 BBS).
.
As shown above, the vast majority of the companies in the 2011 BBS Broadcast Technology Vendor Quality League Table provide products in just one of the product categories we measured as part of the study.
Please note that this is not a measure of company size, but rather a measure of how many product categories each of the above vendors was included in for the 2011 BBS. For example some of the “single product category companies” on the above list — such as Adobe, Dolby and Shure – are quite large.
Yet with 21 out of 30 vendors on this list producing a product in only one 2011 BBS category (out of 26 measured) it appears that that focused, specialized companies are regarded as quality leaders in the eyes of the market. Nevertheless it’s also worth pointing out that large companies can also be considered industry innovators. For example, in the 2011 BBS study, Avid is covered in seven product categories, Snell is covered in five product categories, Sony is covered in four product categories and EVS appears three times.
To further illustrate this point, the chart below shows the number of 2011 BBS product categories per vendor in the 2011 BBS Broadcast Technology Vendor Quality League Table.
.
Number of products per vendor – Single Product Companies Dominate Quality Rankings
A breakdown of how many product categories are produced by each vendor in the 2011 BBS Broadcast Technology Vendor Quality League Table is shown below:
.
With more than two-thirds of the vendors in the 2011 BBS Broadcast Technology Vendor Quality League Table producing a product in just one 2011 BBS product category, this table clearly suggests that focused companies who apply their efforts to specialist product areas are often able to generate a higher perception of quality in the eyes of the market.
Of course, companies are listed here based on how many 2011 BBS product categories they produce, which is not an absolute measure of the products produced be each vendor. There are some very large companies on the list above who appear in just one 2011 BBS category. In total, the 2011 BBS looked at 118 vendors in 26 separate product categories (based on the IABM’s industry model), but even so, it did not necessarily cover the entire product range of all vendors.
Please keep in mind when reviewing this information that all data in these charts is presented in alphabetical order, not in the order brands were ranked by respondents to the 2011 BBS. Also, the charts in this posting measure the responses of all non-vendor participants in the 2011 BBS respondents, regardless of their company type, company size, geographic location, job title and budget for broadcast technology products. Finally please note that this study evaluated a total of 118 brands.
.
In order to get full value from this data, it is necessary to evaluate these results on a granular basis. If you would like more information, please contact Devoncroft Partners.
.
.
This article is based on the findings from the 2011 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS), a global study of industry trends, technology purchasing behavior and the opinion of vendor brands. With more than 8,000 people in 100+ countries participating, the 2011 BBS is the largest and most comprehensive market study ever done in the broadcast industry.
.
Devoncroft Partners has published a variety of reports from 2011 BBS data. For more information, please get in touch.
.
.
Related Content:
Ranking Broadcast Technology Vendors Part 3 – the 2011 BBS Brand Opinion Leaders League Table
Ranking Broadcast Technology Vendors Part 1 – the 2011 BBS Overall Brand Opinion League Table
Tracking Changes in Broadcast Industry Trends — 2011 Versus 2010 Broadcast Industry’s Most Comprehensive Market Study Reveals Top Trends of 2011
More Information About the 2011 Big Broadcast Survey from Devoncroft Partners
.
.
Innovation — The top 30 broadcast technology brands, listed alphabetically (global sample of all respondents) 
