• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, September 9, 2024

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Once again, Apple leads the way in customer loyalty.

In Brand Keys' new annual rankings of brands with the most loyal customers, Apple and Amazon hung on to the No. 1 and 2 spots. But beyond that, Brand Keys reports plenty of shifts, with TikTok rising to third, up from No. 5 last year, knocking both Domino’s (No. 4) and Netflix (No. 5) down a rung.

And four brands shot into the Top Ten, with YouTube jumping into sixth place from No. 11, Levi’s vaulting into No. 8 from 37^th, Dunkin rising to No. 9 from No. 14, and Mattel soaring into 10^th place from No. 42 in last year’s ranking.

According to Robert Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys, driving those changes is how well a given brand does what consumers expect it to. “The better a brand meets expectations, the more loyal customers will be in the short term and how profitable a brand will be in the long term,” he tells Marketing Daily. The trick is that expectations change, causing consumers to feel less loyal to brands they formerly valued.

This is the loyalty consulting company’s 16^th annual Loyalty Leaders List, which this year considered 1,465 brands in more than 140 categories. Of those, 21% were retailers, 18% were in entertainment, and 14% were CPG. Both automotive/travel and tech brands represented 13%.

Also notable, he says, is that only four brands are new this year in the Top 100, the lowest since the survey began, proving that it just gets harder and harder to divine and then deliver on those expectations.

“Loyalty has become this predictive measure of desire,” he says. “What do we want? Brands that understand what I really desire and what I expect and then provide that better than the competition will always win.”

The loyalty paradigm continues to shift because 21st-century consumers – even while relatively loyal – routinely consider other brands.

Some of the leaps have easily observable causes. Levi Strauss, he says, does so well because consumers are expecting more of a direct-to-consumer approach, and it delivers that well. New Balance, No. 65, also jumped ten places, likely for the same reason.

Credit cards and payment services also rose overall, with Visa breaking into the Top 100, American Express jumping to 19 from 35, and both PayPal and MasterCard rising. That’s likely a function of both people using credit cards more, as consumer debt increases, and these brands do a better job.

“American Express, for example, has redone its customer service esperience,” Passikoff says. “Consumers can see that,”

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