Experts panel: • Experts-professionals • Celebrities (public people) • Consumers The procedure for calculating the rankings

The national ranking of the contest “Favorites of Success” (later the Contest) includes all brands of goods and services, officially presented at Ukrainian market in their respective categories according to their profiles. Trade, financial and entertainment institutions of Kyiv City, the capital of Ukraine as well as media and the brightest representatives of Ukrainian show business also participate in this contest.

The respondents of the contest define for themselves the list of categories of the competition, forming their own list of brands and companies, and then offering them to participate by means of a special form on the pages of Internet voting. Survey participants also report of the brands that are no longer working on the Ukrainian market, or about some other objective reasons for which companies and brands must be removed from the voting opinion poll. Organizers of the researches carefully check all the information received and take measures to fill timely the catalog of brands with relevant and reliable information.

Rating positions of competitors are determined with the surveys in three correspondence groups. The Favorites — the most successful brands in groups of categories of Products, Services, City life, Show business and the Mass-media are selected by three expert committees: Experts (industry professionals), Celebrities (well known public people) and Consumers.

Selection and formation of a committee of Professionals (experts in certain areas of the market for goods and services) is made by the organizer and partners of the Contest on rating researches. The procedure for creating this commission, also allows the possibility of self-promotion. Professionals going to join the Panel should fill in an application on Internet page expert.favor.com.ua. The organizer may request from the applicant additional information and documentary evidence.

Professionals’ voting occurs annually, once a year, and ends before the transmission of election results to independent rating agencies and auditors.

Experts can vote only for categories of goods and services relevant to their professional competence, under their own names. Data for each specialist (name, position and place of work, possibly additional information upon request), together with a photo and company logo, which the expert represents, are posted on the website of the Contest in the “Experts” position, and are placed in annual reportable editions of the competition.

Experts representing the participants in the rating cannot choose their own brand and do not vote in the categories presenting trademarks of their company. (During the online voting this restriction are adjusted automatically, by means of software.) The voting for each nomination is considered valid and sufficiently representative sample only if the nomination is voted by at least 5 members of the expert panel.

Data on specialists are posted on the Contest website automatically as soon as experts determine the best trademarks which are relevant to specialization of experts. If the expert has been registered for participation in the survey, but did not give his assessment to the contestants in any of the predefined nominations, the information about this expert will not be published.

Expert Panel of Celebrities (Famous People)

The Celebrity is a Successful Person known to the common public from the media, who takes part in voting as a member of Panel of Celebrities, and takes part in the final ceremony of “Favorites” awarding the winners on the stage.

The composition of the Panel includes the most famous and recognizable public figures of Ukraine — the stars, celebrities. These people affect the formation of tastes and preferences of society, and they are the pride of the nation, role models and idols of the young generation. They have reached undoubted success in their own area of activity, and they can adequately evaluate the success of others. It is no exaggeration to call them true Experts on Success because each of them is a successful person.

Contestants are evaluated by outstanding Ukrainians who have achieved recognition in various fields. Such people are invited to the Panel: representatives of the Ukrainian elite, figures of Ukrainian culture and art, pop and movie stars, famous singers, TV and radio panelists, filmmakers, fashion designers, successful entrepreneurs, representatives of the advertising business, restaurateurs, athletes, writers and publishers, etc., i.e. figures that regularly appear in the media. The Panel is selected and formed by the Organizer. Self-promotion to the Panel of Celebrities is impossible.

Representatives of the Panel have the opportunity to choose the category of voting according their own area of expertise in order to take part only in the categories in which they are quite knowledgeable and thus can make a conscious decision. Voting in each category shall be considered valid and representative sample, only if the nomination gets at least 5 votes from the Panel.

Organizer presents individually by name each member of the Panel of Celebrities participated in the study in the Contest booklets as well as on the website of the competition FAVOR.com.ua.

Consumer Panel

Every user of Ukrainian Internet who buys and consumes goods and uses the services represented in the voting, and who is ready to take part in determining the best goods and services of the year may be a member of this committee. Voting of Consumers is continuous throughout the year and it takes place on the Internet portal FAVOR.com.ua. The whole country chooses the Favorites of Consumers!

Consumers have the opportunity to choose the category to vote according their own decision, and they participate only in categories in which they are quite knowledgeable to have opinion about the Contestants represented in the nomination, and thus can make a conscious choice. To ensure objective evaluation the staff of organizations representing participants in the rating, and persons associated with participants of rating researches cannot choose their own brand and cannot vote in categories, which represent the trademarks of their companies. Restrictions are usually regulated automatically by survey software.

In the categories in which consumers do not have a particular opinion or enough experience to make choice, they can view the current voting results, recommendations of well-informed consumers, consider information on trademarks and respective companies in online catalog.

Unlike other expert committees, Consumer Panel have the opportunity to vote in every of the four calendar quarters during the year. The voting system allows you to take into account the adjustment of consumer preferences over the years, which may be associated with improvement or deterioration in the quality of products or services of presented brands as well as with appearance of new offers on the market.

During calculation the total annual assessment of Consumers survey four quarterly mean scores are summed. The system in which the annual survey is divided into four periods allows not only to monitor the dynamics of changes in consumer preferences throughout the year, but also to prevent the results from malicious massive markups (so-called “flash mobs”) for certain nominees because each intermediate assessment is leveled off in the background of other quarters.

Names and photos of consumers, who specified their Favorites in 100 or more nominations of the Contest in any quarter of the year, are placed automatically on the Board of Honor of the respondents. These users participate in sweepstake prizes from the organizers and sponsors of the Contest.

Internet voting applies a number of rules and restrictions designed to ensure the most objective consideration of public opinion on the principle “one person = one vote” as well as to prevent fraud by biased persons. All rules and restrictions are usually regulated automatically by survey software.

Terms of Consumer Survey

To participate in the online voting the users have to register on the Contest site and provide valid information about them. Required information items are: “Gender”, “Age” (it can be hidden from other users, if desired), “Region”, and email address. The possibility to use a third-party account of social networks like Facebook, VKontakte and Twitter is also offered.

Personal data and contact information of users is NOT publicly disclosed and serves only for possibility to restore lost access to the account.

Straight away after registration, the new portal user gets the opportunity to vote. With access to the system and its own profile user can freely participate in all upcoming quarterly and annual stages of voting.

The user may vote for all nominations of the Contest in any calendar quarter. During voting you can:

• Choose the best brands in the categories (the rating of the selected brands is being increased);
• Change your selection, moving mark to the other brand (total result of the brand which mark was removed is reduced). Nevertheless, after reviewing the current election results, you cannot change your mind and affect the rankings this season;
• Offer to participate to the brands that have recently appeared on the market and have not been presented in the voting list yet;
• Recommend to remove from the voting list the brands, which disappeared from the market;
• Express your personal opinion on the Contestants in comments to a certain category of voting (following the generally accepted moral and ethical standards).

Restrictions: (are adjusted automatically by software)

• One person can have only one account on FAVOR.com.ua. Upon detection of multiple accounts relative to a single user, all records created as a result of repeated registrations are removed and re-votes are not counted. (If you have already been registered, you should enter under your registered name, and use, if necessary, the automatic password reminder, but should never try to be re-registered);
• The Ukrainian contest “Favorites of Success” is conducted among the participants of the Ukrainian market, and takes into account the opinions of only Ukrainian consumers. Consequently, the online voting at FAVOR.com.ua is carried out only among users of the Ukrainian segment of Internet. Votes from foreign subscribers are not counted in the voting, are not displayed in the results and do not affect the overall rating. The only exception here is the nominations of “Show business” and “Tourism”, where foreigners votes are counted.
• For the nominations “Services” and “City Life” the Contest presents a number of items related to the market services of the capital city of Ukraine, including shopping, entertainment, sports, medical and educational institutions. Only people from Kyiv can vote in the nomination “Capital”. Residents of other regions of Ukraine can freely browse the results, share their opinions and personal experiences, but can not influence the course of voting.

Organizer of the Contest has the right to block access to the vote in the case of attempts to falsify the results — e.g. to increase intentionally with software the number of votes for certain brands (creation of untrue mailbox, indicating of non-existent mailboxes, registering multiple accounts/profiles for one user). Fraudulent votes are eliminated correcting correspondently the rating of Contestants.

The procedure for calculating the rankings

Respondents of each of the three Panels during voting in any of the categories can determine from 1 to 5 the best trade marks (the number depends on the total number of items presented in the category). The final grade of each respondent group for each nomination is considered to be representative only if at least 5 respondents have voted for this nomination, and a comprehensive, integrated assessment is calculated only taking into account representativeness of the three respondent groups.

The percentage of each brand references is calculated relative to the total number of references in this category.

The result is normalized so that the maximum score is 5 points, and 0% corresponds to 0 points.

Integrated rating based on the scores gotten from all three respondent groups is calculated for each Contestant. While calculating the total score, the weight of the views of the three voting groups is taken into account.

The following weights are accepted in the calculation of the integral rating in the category to determine the “Absolute Favorite”:

The final score is calculated by the formula: SCORE = (normalized score of the Panel of Experts) × 0,4 + (normalized score of the Panel of Celebrities) × 0,2 + (average annual normalized rank of the Consumers Panel) × 0,4. According to the results of assessments in each table and according to the position each Contestant got, the invited rating agency calculates the final score using professional technology. And in this way the winner in each category of the Competition is determined.

An Absolute Favorite in the category is the Contestant that took the first place according the integrated comprehensive assessment of the final results for this category, and received from the Organizer the exclusive right to be announced as a winner in the nomination.

Contestant, who took the first place in the final assessment of the individual expert Panel, can be recognized as respectively: Favorite of Experts, Favorite of Celebrities or Favorite of Consumers.

Amendments to the rules for calculating ratings and determining the winners

In accordance with the auditors of the Contest a number of limitations are used in researches in addition to the original method described.

Limitations when calculating the winners in accordance with the recommendations of KIIS, 2009:

1. In the case of under-representation of one of the Expert Panels (if the number of respondents of the Panel of Professionals or the Panel of Celebrities in the category is less than 5 people, this is considered as insufficient number to build the strong and reliable system of estimates because the opinion of several respondents can significantly affect the overall result, distorting it), a comprehensive integrated rating in the category is not calculated and, therefore, “Absolute Favorite” is not announced;
2. If the leader in consumer Internet survey (Favorite of Consumers) did not get any vote from two other Panels (Professionals and Celebrities), such a victory, according to the auditors of the Contest can not be considered objective enough and, therefore, are not announced. Furthermore, in this case, the auditor considers that it is possible to disqualify such participant’s annual ranking, and announce as the winner the other Contestant, that took the second place, in condition of receiving of adequate support from other respondent groups.

KIIS instructions regarding calculation of rating nominees added to the study in the middle of 2011:

3. The original methodology of the Contest involves the division of the annual voting into quarterly stages to study consumer preferences throughout the year. Thus, methodology allows the nominating of the new participants in the middle of the year, starting, for example, from II-nd or III-rd calendar quarter. At the same time, upon calculating the annual rating of participant of the consumer’s poll, the rating is being based on the average arithmetic score received by the participant in each of the quarters in which it was present in the survey questionnaire. Such methodology, unfortunately, makes it possible for a new contestant who appeared on the questionnaire, for example, in the second half of the year, and who managed to get the maximum score in the final stages of the competition, to “outweigh” in the annual ranking (by its estimated “maximum” arithmetic average) another contestant, who was the real leader of the nomination in the first half of the year.
   In accordance with the auditor instructions, was introduced a mechanism of “penalization” of the scores of participants which was absent in the initial stages of research (online voting). The average annual rating is calculated in such a way, so that the participant’s nominal score during it’s absence could not not exceed 4 points (according to adopted standard 5-point scale).

Upon completion of the whole annual cycle of the ranking researches the Contestants, who won the 1st place in their category, receive a notification of a victory from the Organizers of the Contest that gives them the right to sign in a 5 day period a contract to participate in the special public award ceremony and accept advantages of the official winner. Winners of the competition, trademarks #1 in Ukraine, are announced at the annual award ceremony (widely reported in the media), and are awarded an honorary gold medal “Favorite of Success.”

In accordance with the Regulations of the Contest, the Winner whose status corresponds to the status of “Absolute Favorite of Success” (the highest score on the comprehensive assessment of all respondent groups) within 5 working days after receiving notice of the victory has the right to be “exclusively announced as the winner in the category”. In this case the Organizer is engaged not to disclose during the award ceremony the trademarks that have taken the rest of winning positions – “Favorite of Professionals”, “Favorite of Celebrities”, “Favorite of Consumers”, etc.

The winners who do not want to take advantages of the official winner of the contest are not disclosed by the Organizer of the Contest, do not take part in public award ceremony and in promotional campaign in the media, do not get appropriate benefits of the winner and rights to use Contest award symbols.

 …and many others…