“Eavesdropping TV” Stories Hit Samsung Perception

Ted MarzilliCEO YouGov Direct
February 25, 2015, 9:18 PM GMT+0

Early February reports about Samsung’s SmartTV privacy policy, which warned that sensitive, spoken, information could be captured via voice recognition, triggered a rash of “TV eavesdropping” rumors that sent the electronics company to its lowest consumer perception point since September 2012.

Despite Samsung alerting the public that they could disable the voice recognition in their TV’s, the news sunk Samsung perception levels by nearly in half in a single week.

Samsung had been comfortably ahead of close rival LG since late 2012; now the two are tied in perception levels. Both brands still lead the category with this metric, including Panasonic, Sony, JVC, Sanyo and Philips.

Samsung’s crisis impacted their brand in other countries as well: France, Germany and the UK all showed declines in consumer perception over the same February time frame. However, none of them fell as much as the United States.

Samsung was measured using YouGov BrandIndex’s Buzz score, which asks respondents: "If you've heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?" All respondents were adults 18 and over.

Buzz: Samsung, JVC, LG, Panasonic, Philips, Sanyo, Sony

Buzz: US, UK, Germany, France





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