Top Brands Ranked by Customer Loyalty

Mobile, digital, and social brands continue to exhibit loyalty supremacy, with new brands and categories making up more than a third of this year’s Top-100 leaders list, according to Brand Keys Loyalty Leader 2014 report.

Topping this years list are Apple, Amazon, What’s app, Google, YouTube, and Kindle.

Thirty six of the top-100 Loyalty Leaders are new brands or categories.

Most new arrivals facilitate communication and social outreach: tablets, smartphones, and social networks, with What’s App (instant messaging), Netflix, and Amazon (video streaming), Instagram, and PayPal (online payments) now representing that trend.

Other, new, non-digital/social categories include Fast-Casual Restaurants (Chipotle, Panera, Chick-fil-A), Insurance (USAA), Credit Cards (Discover, American Express), and Beer (Sam Adams).

Dunkin’ Donuts was the only non-digital/social brand in the top-10, up 7 spots from last year, but not astonishing when you realize their customers have rated them #1 in the out-of-home coffee category for years.

The 2014 Brand Keys Loyalty Leaders top-10 rank as follows:

  1. Amazon: tablets
  2. Apple: tablets
  3. Apple: smartphone
  4. YouTube: social networking
  5. What’s App: instant messaging
  6. Amazon: online retail
  7. Google: search engines
  8. Kindle: e-readers
  9. Samsung: smartphones
  10. Dunkin’ Donuts: coffee (out-of-home)

45% of the top-100 brands account for consumer outreach and engagement via cellular and social networks, and the phones, smartphones, computers, and tablets needed to meet ever-increasing expectations related to outreach and personal connectivity the consumer uses as a yardstick to measure brands.

Last year beauty and personal care brands accounted for approximately a fifth of the top-100 but this year represent only 13%.

Traditional retail brands were down 50%.  The ineptitude for many retailers to provide meaningful differentiation — beyond low-lower-lowest pricing strategies — has seriously eroded loyalty levels in the retail category.

That, and a shift to buying online and via mobile devices.

Retail brands that remain among this year’s Loyalty Leaders include J. Crew (#50), The Gap (#80), Macy’s (#88), Victoria’s Secret (#75) and T.J. Maxx (#92).

Six automotive brands made the top-100, including: Hyundai (#23), Ford (#26), Toyota (#48), Jeep (#70), Nissan (#94), and KIA (#99).

Nissan appears on yhr list for the first time while Ford and Toyota moved up the list +12 spots each, Jeep moved up +11.

The brands that showed the greatest loyalty gains this year were:

  • Netflix (+79)
  • Estee Lauder (+31)
  • MAC Cosmetics (+28)
  • HTC smartphones (+26)
  • Cover Girl (+25)

With a few exceptions, it turns out that the biggest Loyalty Leader losers were primarily categories, with certain categories just disappearing.

Those categories included Breakfast Cereal, which should not come as a shock to anyone.

Perennial Loyalty Leaders absent from this years list include Pepsi and Coke, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, the Today Show, Bing, and Yahoo.

When it comes to the search category, only Google (#7) appears.

Not surprisingly Genera Motors did not make this year’s list.

McDonald’s, which had appeared since the List’s 1996 inception, dropped off the top-100 list too.

In a study conducted earlier this year by Brand Keys, Millennials, a key audience for fast food chains, reports a 20% decrease in visits to them, with 42% reporting increased visits to fast-casual restaurants, a category whose brands have shown up for the first time on this years list.

Other brands not appearing on the loyalty Leaders List this year included Ben & Jerry’s, Canon (point-and-shoot cameras), H&M, Haagen-Daz, Skechers, Skype, Southwest Airlines, Walgreens, and Walmart.

Brands with the greatest loyalty and engagement erosion:

  • Max Factor (-20)
  • Clinique (-16)
  • Grey Goose (-13)
  • Revlon (-13)
  • Apple Computers (-11)
  • Costco (-11)
  • Sam’s Club (-11)

While it is true that some of the shifts are due to the creation and adoption of new categories and brands that better meet — even exceed — customer expectations, brands that understand that real emotional connections can serve as a surrogate for added-value.

The brand which have made loyalty and emotional engagement one of their real strategic priorities and KPIs will always show up at the top of a consumer’s list.

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