Top 10 Brands That Know the Secret of Loyalty

When Amazon introduced the first Kindle e-reader in 2007, the device cost $399 and the first run sold out in hours. By 2012, the Kindle had dropped in price to as low as $60 or $70 and effectively rubbed out its competitors. A basic Kindle, now in its eighth generation, has a list price of $100; the top of the line Oasis model costs $360. An extended range of products with a solid brand name, one could argue that Kindle is the rock on which other Amazon-branded hardware products were built.

Amazon.com missed being the world’s first e-commerce site by about 15 years, but once it hit the web in 1994, the company owned the next 25 years. Consumers mostly love Amazon for its convenience, low prices, and general attention to customers. The company built its brand loyalty one shipment at a time and will likely continue to be judged on that basis going forward.

AT&T has been conducting business under that name (or acronym) since 1885. Longevity counts for something in brand loyalty, as does being just one of a handful of large companies competing for the same customers in a business that depends on scale. AT&T’s customer satisfaction score is right on average for the wireless industry, but its strong connection to the communications industry’s history makes the company a brand loyalty leader.

The South Korean automaker began life as a construction company after World War II and did not get into the car business until 1967 and did not enter the U.S. market until 1986. All three of the company’s brands — Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis — were top-rated in 2018’s J.D. Power Initial Quality Survey. As the quality of all new cars and light trucks has improved over the past 30 years or so, loyalty to a vehicle brand depends on exceeding expectations. No one is loyal to a poorly built automaker.

Even older than AT&T, Konica got its start in 1873 as a provider of photographic and lithographic materials. Camera-maker Minolta came along in 1928 and built and sold its first copier machine in 1960. The two companies established a joint venture in 2000 and merged in 2003, and pulled out of the photo and camera industry in 2007. There is no shortage of strong competition in the business printer/copier market with names like Samsung, Canon, HP, Fuji Xerox, and a host of others. Leading in brand loyalty in this sector is no small feat.

Founded in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1948 as a donut and coffee restaurant called Open Kettle, renamed Dunkin’ Donuts in 1950, the brand now goes only by its first name (sort of like Beyoncé). Given the fickleness of consumer tastes in nearly everything else, maintaining a top brand rating in what is, in effect, a commodity is no mean accomplishment. Holding on to its top rating for 13 straight years indicates that Dunkin’ continues to meet consumers’ lofty expectations.

Domino’s got its start in 1960 and by the 1980s had become identified with its “30-minutes or it’s free” delivery guarantee. The company dropped the quick-delivery promise following a number of auto accidents that were attributed to drivers trying to beat the 30-minute deadline. That 250+% increase in overall consumer trust expectations has not affected the pizza business; the category has experienced just an 8% rise year over year, suggesting that the trust level is likely as high as it’s going to get. Barring a major stumble, then, other pizza joints are going to have a hard time displacing Domino’s long-running perch at the top.

The path to search dominance is littered with the corpses of search engines vanquished by Google. Search engines from Alta Vista, Lycos, Infoseek, Inktomi, HotBot, Ask Jeeves, and many others preceded Google, but the company’s page-rank system simply delivered higher quality results. And while some of the company’s business practices have come under fire recently, the power of its search engine remains undisputed: In January, Google’s search market share was nearly 93%.

Avis rolled out its “We Try Harder” advertising and marketing campaign in 1962, framing itself as the number-two car rental company (behind Hertz). Americans love underdogs and this campaign played right into that love. The campaign was so successful that Avis didn’t drop the tagline until 2012. While Avis never did surpass Hertz to become number one, consumers remember that it has never stopped trying.

The Discover card was launched in 1985 by Sears. The card charged no annual fee and offered a higher-than-usual credit limit, but other retailers were loathe to accept the card because that doing so was helping Sears, at the time still one of their chief competitors. Sears sold all its financial businesses in 1993, but the legacy of the Discover card continues — the card still does not charge an annual fee.