2017’s Top Brands Ranked by Customer Loyalty

October 13, 2017

Amazon has taken over as this year’s brand loyalty leader, displacing last year’s leader Google for the top spot. That’s according to the latest annual loyalty study [pdf] from Brand Keys, which ranked customer engagement and loyalty for 740 brands across 83 categories.

Rounding out the top 5 were:

  • Apple, flat at #3, for Tablets;
  • Netflix, flat at #4, for Video Streaming; and
  • Apple, up a spot to #5, for Smartphones.

These five brands were among the ones most likely to meet consumer expectations for their respective categories.

Amazon was again impressive this year, as it appeared in the top 10 list three times: for its performance in the Online Retail, Video Streaming and Tablet categories.

Apple also made the list multiple times for its mobile devices, in each case cracking the top 5 rankings overall. It is facing more of a challenge from Samsung this year, though: Samsung jumped to the #7 ranking for loyalty to its smartphone business, up from #14 last year.

Brands are able to appear in the list more than once as they are measured against the loyalty “ideal” for each category in which they are present. This generates a percentage for each brand in each category, and the loyalty leader rankings are then formed by comparing the top percentages across all brands and categories.

Each of the top 10 customer loyalty leaders this year is a digital brand. Traditional brands make up 7 of the next 10, though, led by Dunkin’ Donuts (#11) and Nike (#12). Digital and social networking brands account for 36 of the top 100, more than twice the number of the next-most heavily represented category, retail (16).

There were 7 brands new to the top 100 this year, including: FOX (#47) and MSNBC (#58), both for TV News; restaurants Shake Shack (#99) and 5 Guys Burgers & Fries (#100); and auto-related GEICO (#88) and Lyft (#95).

The biggest ranking improvements were experienced by:

  • Vanguard (+56 spots to #44);
  • Forever 21 (+46 positions to #37); and
  • Home Depot (+39 spots to #45).

The largest drops among those still in the top 100 were suffered by Zuprowka Vodka (down 53 to #74), L’Oreal (down 40 to #91) and Sam’s Club (down 35 to #82).

The full list of the top 100 can be accessed here [pdf].

About the Data: Brand Keys’ Loyalty Leaders analysis was conducted in September 2017 and includes assessments from 49,168 consumers, 16 to 65 years of age, from the nine US Census Regions, who self-selected the categories in which they are consumers and the brands for which they are customers. The 2017 Loyalty Leader assessments examined 83 categories and 740 brands.

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