The survey, expanded on previous years to include responses from consumers in a total of 10 markets in the region, presents an overview of the local and global brands consumers think most highly of across sectors and geographies.

In total, 3,600 people were interviewed including for the first time consumers from Japan, Korea and Australia. These, together with respondents from China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand were drawn from TNS' 6^thdimension online access panels.

To determine the best brands in each of the product and service categories covered by the survey, participants were asked two questions:

• When you think of [product / service / category], which is the 'best' brand that comes to your mind? By 'best', we mean the one that you trust the most or the one that has the best reputation in [product / service / category].
• Apart from the brand that you have just mentioned, which brand do you consider to be the second-best brand in the [product / service / category]?

The categories presented to each participant included: alcohol and cigarettes; financial services; automotive; health; retail; food; beverages; electronic goods; media and telecommunications; and baby products, household products, toiletries and cosmetics.

Moving up one place to take this year's number one spot as Asia's top brand is Japanese electronics brand Sony. Coming in second place is region's most popular business and personal imaging solutions, Canon, followed in third place by sporting giant Nike. Consumer electronics brands dominate the top 20 most named brands (occupying 7 places), particularly those from Japan (Sony and Panasonic) and Korea (Samsung and LG). Other categories with a strong presence in the top 20 are search engines, food and beverage, and retail.