OREANDA-NEWS. On 16 June 2008 was announced, that COMSTAR-Direct CJSC, a leading Internet broadband access service provider, part of the COMSTAR-UTS Group, has been given the Trusted Brand 2008 Award for the STREAM brand under which the provider is operating on the Moscow Internet service market.

COMSTAR-Direct has become the Trusted Brand winner of the international Internet-Company nomination for the fifth consecutive year, which is a convincing evidence of consumer loyalty to the chosen brand.

International research ‘Trusted Brands’ has been conducted annually since 2001 by Reader’s Digest, one of the world’s largest publishing houses, among its wide readership, and it still remains Europe’s most extended study of consumer preferences. The Publishing House’s flagship, the Reader’s Digest magazine, has been printed in Russia since 1991 and is distributed in all regions, with its subscription circulation in excess of 400000 copies.

The purpose of survey is to identify which brands the Europeans trust most and why. This year’s research encompassed more than 23000 people from 16 states including Russia. The sampling pattern reflects as wide cross-section of each country’s population of Europe as possible. The respondents were asked to nominate the winning brand in 37 categories, of which 20 brands are international and 17 – national. All questions in the questionnaire were ‘open’. i.e. the participants could rate any brand as # 1 at their discretion. The research is independent in that it is only the respondents themselves that could influence its findings.   Comparative analysis of the results indicated that the people in Russia and Czech Republic are least predisposed to migrating from one brand to another.

Sergey Terpugov, Deputy General Director/Commercial Director, COMSTAR-Direct CJSC, received the Trusted Brand 2008 prize at the winners’ gala awarding ceremony on 10 June 2008 in Moscow.

“For a service company operating in mass market, the extent to which service consumers’ trust the brand is one of the most important indicators of successful performance.  The fact that STREAM ever since its inception has been retaining the trusted brand title for several consecutive years, testifies to the effectiveness of the chosen marketing policy targeted for cultivation of long-term relations with subscribers. This is what the comprehensive program for improvement of the existing user base loyalty, formulated in the Company, is aiming for. Also, a lot of attractive offers are made to new subscribers of STREAM. We wish to say thank you to all those who chose COMSTAR-Direct as their ISP, for the full marks given to our work, and we will strive to continue to live up to the established reputation as an advanced, customer-oriented operator,” he said.