2005 Annual Report Card Methodology

Now in its 20th year, the VARBusiness Annual Report Card (ARC) examines VARs' levels of satisfaction with vendors' IT products, services and channel programs. The 2005 ARC explores 82 channel programs, covering 41 vendors across 19 product categories. New this year, Networking Infrastructure was divided into two categories: Data Networking and Voice Networking (VoIP). Business Software was also added.

Initial ARC work began this past December/January, when product categories, vendors and criteria were scrutinized to determine inclusion. VARBusiness conducted qualitative editorial research with a select group of experts to identify category scope and details. Vendors were chosen based on market share reported by industry analysts Gartner, IDC and iSuppli.

Each participating company submitted a list of its VAR partners to be surveyed. If the minimum requirement was not available, then a sample was acquired from VARBusiness' circulation database to supplement the list.

VARBusiness partnered with Bernett Research for data collection, and with Answers Research for data analysis and consulting services. Overall, 5,400 interviews were completed during June and July via the Web and telephone. VARs rated the importance of 15 criteria, then rated their vendor satisfaction for each. VARs also rated each vendor on overall loyalty. Criteria was weighted by relative importance, while loyalty was weighted by derived importance. This was calculated by a regression analysis, and combined to ascertain an overall winner.