Investing

Why Amazon Is World's Most Valuable Brand, Followed by Apple and Microsoft

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: June 30, 2020 6:56 am

Amazon has a brand value of $416 billion. Apple ranks second at $353 million, followed by Microsoft at $326 billion and Google at $323 billion. These are among the results from the new BrandZ 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2020. In total, these top 100 are valued at $5 trillion.

The results of the study on the perception of consumer brands come from research that includes data from 3.8 million consumers based in 51 markets.

Among the most telling results of the survey are the power of America’s top tech brands, Facebook ranks eighth on the list with a brand value of $147 billion. Along with Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, they have driven much of the extraordinary rise of the U.S. stock market. They also dominate the world of e-commerce, cloud computing, online search and search ad dollars, and social media. Except for the competition among them, they are considered in a class by themselves in terms of the revenue of their parent companies, their market values and market share. Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has a market cap of $1.6 billion. Microsoft Corp.’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) is $1.5 billion and Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) is $1.4 billion. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (parent of Google) has a market cap of $953 billion, while Facebook Inc.’s (NASDAQ: FB) is $628 billion. This makes them the five most valuable companies in America.

Not all four had an equal increase in brand value from 2019. Amazon’s value soared 32% and Microsoft’s was up 30%. Apple’s rose 14%, Google’s rose 5% and Facebook’s fell 7%.

The top 10 were rounded out by Visa at $187 billion (up 5%), China’s Alibaba at $153 billion (up 10%), China’s Tencent at $151 billion (up 1%), McDonald’s at $128 billion (down 1%) and Mastercard at $108 billion (up 18%).

Among the notable winners in terms of the increase of their values, Netflix rose 34% to $46 billion. Walmart rose 24% to $46 billion and Instagram rose 47% to $42 billion. Facebook owns Instagram. Adobe rose 25% to $36 billion, and LinkedIn rose 31% to $30 billion. Microsoft owns LinkedIn. Tech brands also dominate this list.

Among the largest losers, the value of Marlboro dropped 19% to $58 billion. Disney fell by 14% to $49 billion, T-Mobile declined 16% to $33 billion, and Uber dropped 35% to $16 billion.

If there is any conclusion to be drawn from the survey, it is that over a decade ago the list was topped by brands that included consumer staples Coke, Marlboro and Budweiser. They are in perpetual decline. Tech has overwhelmed them to take their places.