Consumers once shared an unusually strong bond with Apple. But that reportedly started to slip last year, a trend that continues in 2020. A report released Wednesday on the emotional bonds consumers form with brands puts the iPhone maker in third place overall.
Still, Apple came in at the top of the technology & telecommunications industry, beating Samsung and Google.
MBLM tracks how consumers feel about brands, a metric it calls Brand Intimacy. The study is now in its tenth year, with fresh rankings out today.
For three years running, Apple led all other companies. That changed in 2019, when it was beat out by Disney, another brand known for tugging at the heartstrings of consumers.
And in the newly-released version, Amazon came out ahead of them both in brand intimacy. Disney now sits in second place, ahead of Apple.
What might be troubling for Apple’s leadership is that MBLM found that the company’s score dropped from 70.9 to 66.8 over the last year. But scores for all three of these top brands went down. Disney’s dropped from 77.9 in 2019 to 67.8. And while Amazon’s score was lower too, going from 69.8 to 68.3 in the latest study, that was still good enough to come out on top.
Apple leads tech industry in ‘brand intimacy’
Although it no longer beats every other company, the Apple brand ranked #1 in the technology and telecommunications industry category of MBLM’s study. It’s followed by Samsung and Google, two companies that collaborate on the Android ecosystem. The remaining brands in the top 10 for brand intimacy for this industry were Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, Dell, LG, HP and Intel.
There’s no single demographic that pushed Apple to the top of the rankings. Both men and women ranked Apple as their favorite intimate brand. And it led among multiple consumer age groups, with both millennials and those over 35 years old preferring it. The iPhone maker also ranked #1 in the industry among consumers no matter their income level.
MBLM‘s Brand Intimacy 2020 Report analyzed the responses of 6,200 consumers in the U.S., Mexico and UAE. It tracks 400 brands in 15 industries.
