How We Did It

The 2013 edition of the Most Respected Companies Survey was conducted by Ipsos for Businessworld. The exercise was carried out in two phases. To begin with, a shortlist of companies was provided to Ipsos by Businessworld across 15 sectors — Apparel & Textiles; Automobiles; Banking, Financial Services & Insurance; Cement; Consumer Durables; FMCG; Hospitality; Infrastructure; Metals, Mining & Minerals; Oil & Gas; Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare; Retail; Technology; Telecom; and Emerging Sectors.

Each sector comprised of 15-20 companies. Fieldwork was conducted within the peer group of each sector, wherein senior executives were asked to rate companies in their sector on a set of predefined parameters. Respondent designations ranged from senior managers to CEOs, and their total experience was a minimum of 10 years (with at least 3 years in the current sector). For all sectors, individuals in companies with a minimum turnover of Rs 100 crore were interviewed. A total of 770 respondents participated in this round. Data was collected in 8 cities. The ratings were clubbed to arrive at the rankings for Phase 1.

The top 3-4 companies from each sector in the Phase 1 rankings were then taken for consideration in Phase 2. Also, a few other companies were included at the editor’s discretion. A total of 52 companies were exposed to 514 respondents in Phase 2. The respondents were asked to rank the top 10 companies out of the 52, and then rate them on predefined parameters. For this phase, too, respondent designations were similar to Phase 1.

For analysis, the companies were divided into four categories. Category 1: >60 per cent respondents ranking it as top company, Category 2: 30-60 per cent ranking it as top company, Category 3: 20-30 per cent, Category 4: <20 per cent. Companies falling in category 1 were given higher weightage than others. A composite score for each company was calculated by adding its individual weighted scores for each parameter. And the final ranks were arrived at on the composite scores of Phase 2. 

(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 09-09-2013)