• by Aaron Baar , March 8, 2010

Among the top four wireless companies in the U.S., Verizon Wireless comes out on top when it comes to consumer perception of quality, value and customer satisfaction, at least in the past year.

According to YouGov's BrandIndex, which measures consumer perception of brands on a daily basis, Verizon's average index score between Feb. 26, 2009 and Feb. 26, 2010 for quality was 56.9, well ahead of AT&T's score of 38.8. Verizon also topped the value and customer satisfaction categories with scores of 25 and 43.5, respectively. (The next closest company again was AT&T, with scores of 8.2 and 28.3, respectively.)

"Verizon is the clear leader," Lance Fraenkel, a senior analyst with YouGov, tells Marketing Daily. "The map wars were a big positive for them in establishing themselves as a leader. It's a combination of their messaging being outstanding and following through on customer service."

T-Mobile and Sprint were much farther behind the two leaders. T-Mobile racked up scores of 4.4, negative 5.2 and negative 12.8 on quality, value and customer satisfaction; Sprint scored negatively on all three categories with a negative 1.7 on value, negative 23.9 on value and negative 12.7 on customer satisfaction. (YouGov's BrandIndex is compiled by subtracting negative feedback from positive feedback. A score of zero means both negative and positive feedback are equal, while a negative score indicates more negative feedback than positive.)

"Sprint and T-Mobile are very closely associated with one another from a consumer standpoint," Fraenkel says. "They just have to find a compelling enough message and match it with their phones."

Among all the categories, Fraenkel notes that all of the wireless carriers scored relatively low on value, suggesting some vulnerability and volatility as the companies craft their marketing messages. Sprint has begun to see some movement in the value category in the days since launching an advertising campaign featuring CEO Dan Hesse talking about how the company's talk and data plans are more inclusive than its competitors'.

"They've come up a bit" since launching the campaign, Fraenkel says. "They're a few points ahead of their yearly average, and AT&T has taken a hit."