The top honours go to Waterford Crystal judged by American consumers as the brand with the highest quality. Other World Class brands (in descending order) include Rolls-Royce Bentley, Craftsman Tools, Crayola Crayons, Bose Stereo, Discovery Channel, M&M’s, WD-40 spray lubricant, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Arm & Hammer Baking Soda, Reynolds Wrap, Harley-Davidson, Kodak photographic film, Heinz ketchup, National Geographic Magazine, Master Lock padlocks, Clorox bleach and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. According to Dr Berdie of Total Research, "These are brands that are expensive and appeal to elegance, brands that are inexpensive and appeal to functional excellence, brands with a very simple product promise, and brands with much more complicated images. Why are these 19 very eclectic brands on the same list? EquiTrend Online tells us that these brands are World Class Brands because they share the same characteristic: They deliver what they promise. As a result, they score extremely high with all 40 consumer segments we measure. That's what a 50-cent candy has in common with a $100,000 automobile. Quality counts." EquiTrend Online is a comprehensive measurement of brand equity that uses Internet technology to provide in-depth feedback from 30,000 Internet users on their perceptions of the quality of more than 1,300 brands in 35 industry categories. The service was launched in November 2000. The study found World Class Brands in only 9 of the 35 categories studied: Household Goods, Automobile Manufacturers, Consumer Electronics, Media (television), Media (magazines), Foods, Motorcycles, Over-the-Counter Products, and a Miscellaneous grouping. Household Products has the most World Class Brands with eight of the 19. EquiTrend Online tells corporate executives and brand managers if their own perceptions of their brands differ from customers' perceptions. The value of EquiTrend Online is that it measures not only how brands compare to other brands in their specific industries, but it shows companies how their brands stack up against all brands. The service also tells corporate executives and brand managers why their brands are not world class. Dr Berdie added "EquiTrend identifies the gaps. It points to where marketing and brand managers need to look more closely to improve brand equity. No brand equity measurement system has proven as valid and useful as EquiTrend. It comes closer than any other system to accurately assessing the quantity of goodwill that a brand has accumulated among consumers. As this goodwill increases, sales increase, the ability to charge higher prices increases, corporate profitability increases, and corporate stock price increases. We have a method of measuring that does correlate brand equity with business results." EquiTrend Online builds on the vast brand equity database that Total Research has collected during the past 12 years of the firm's EquiTrend survey of consumer brand perception. EquiTrend captures brand preferences of different demographic and psychographic segments so marketers can evaluate their brands' performance among various audiences to determine how well their brands are known, and if the intended message reaches the desired consumer segments. EquiTrend also measures a brand's "salience," which is the percentage of consumers who feel they know enough about the brand to rate it. This is stronger than "awareness." Consumers are aware of the brand and feel they know enough about it to rate its quality. Of the 19 World Class Brands, 14 have salience at 90% or higher, with M&Ms the highest at 99%. High salience indicates these brands have benefited from long-term advertising and marketing campaigns that have established and maintained their salience as successive generations of consumers enter the market.