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What's a Preference
Rating?
This specialized rating gives us a way of figuring out how a product's market share affects its rank in our Best Products survey. | Back to Best Products: User Picks | The Preference Rating, which adjusts for the statistical advantage of high market share, supplements the straight percentage results we garner in our annual Best Products survey. To determine both results, we e-mailed a group of Network World readers asking them to participate in this private Web survey. We received 504 completed entries, with two-thirds from large companies (1,000 or more employees). Respondents came from 16 industries, with manufacturing, education, government, finance and retail/wholesale trade topping the list. We asked participants to tell us which products they used, choosing from a drop-down list, and then which of these products they deemed best. King, Brown & Partners, a survey firm in Sausalito, Calif., calculated the percentage of best votes and the Preference Rating. A product with a high market share (percentage of "use" votes) has a better chance of earning a higher number of "best" votes than a product with fewer users. A product that earns a high number of best votes compared with its number of users will have a high Preference Rating. The converse is also true. For example, in the desktop management software category, 49% of participants said they used Microsoft's Systems Management Server 2.0. Yet only 31% voted it best. SMS therefore had a Preference Rating of 0.63. In contrast, 34% use Novell's ZENworks, yet 36% voted it best, landing it a 1.06 Preference Rating. A 1.0 score is the baseline. A score above 1.0 indicates voters thought the product better than its competitors. Those that scored below 1.0 illustrate the reverse (see Highest and Lowest charts). - Julie Bort and Brenda Stull, research director, King, Brown & Partners
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