Icons of Trust 2012 – Mice & Keyboards

Mice and Keyboards as a product category, evokes two very divergent images in the minds of two distinct kinds of consumers. An ordinary Joe looks at these as mere input devices – a means to an end – and usually settles for the Rs. 1000 Keyboard Mouse combo for his assembled PC. He is brand conscious mind you, and will have his brand leanings but for him it’s a decision which does not require too much mindspace. Gamers on the other hand will scoff at the idea of a keyboard mouse combo especially one that’s sub 2.5k. These consumers take their input devices seriously and think of them as specialised devices.
As far as brand making these devices are concerned, you have both a brand like Logitech that makes regular mice and keyboards as well as gaming centric devices, and one the other hand you have brands such as Razor that keep their product lines gaming specific.

This is the first time we’re including Mice & Keyboards as a category in our Icons of trust survey and here are the results:

In Mica as well as Keyboards, Logitech reigned supreme and emerged as the most trusted brand in India. In fact for the next two places as well, the results were identical in both categories (click on the chart for exact scores), Microsoft came in second while iBall was third.

Key findings:

• For Mice not one brand got a negative score. Genius and Verbatim were close to zero but managed not to tipple over into the negative side.
• As far as keyboards were concerned iBall and Microsoft had nearly the same overall score. iBall lagged slightly in the quality parameter, but was neck and neck when it came to availability and awareness. In quality too it fared not too bad – almost as many people said they would recommend iBall products compared with those in favour of Microsoft. It’s surprising to see the perception of an indigenous brand improve considerably.

click to enlarge