I think customer conversations or chatter or buzz will increasingly have a great impact on brand preference, brand awareness and marketshare. I did a trend analysis of some Indian brands in different categories - Retail, Telecom, Technology, Banks etc. You can do it here for the following brands.
Interestingly, the customer chatter for some of these brands - Shoppers' Stop, Pantaloon, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Tata Indicom, Reliance Infocomm, Wipro, Infosys and they show a direct correlation to how these brands have innovated or performed in the marketplace. Increasingly brands need to pay attention to customer conversations and ensure they are "top-of-chat" in addition to being "top-of-mind". This will in the future reflect customer involvement, customer engagement and customer ownership trends for many of these brands.
I did the same for Google & Microsoft, Apple & Dell and the results do reflect the success of Google and Apple in the recent past!