Beverages Industry Improves Brand Intimacy Slightly, Shifts from #12 to #11 Ranking, According to MBLM’s 2019 Brand Intimacy Study

The beverages industry enjoyed a slight lift in measuring its overall emotional connection with consumers this year, rising one rank to #11 out of 15 industries showcased in the 2019 Brand Intimacy Report. Nescafe in particular had a strong year, ranking #1 for the industry and dominating all demographics. The brand even surged into the Top 10 of the overall study (across all industries) for the second time in three years. Its success is followed by Lipton at #2, and Red Bull at #3. Pepsi, Barakat, Coca-Cola, Lacnor, Mai Dubai, Masafi and Oasis round out the Top 10, in that order.

The beverage industry scored high on immediate emotional connections, with 45% of consumers surveyed indicating that they felt an immediate emotional connection with brands in the industry. Caffeinated beverages were the clear winner, with the top three brands (Nescafe, Lipton and Red Bull) being strongly associated with daily rituals. Mixed families of soft drinks and juices clearly occupy the middle, and all water brands are at the bottom of the list.

Brand Intimacy is defined as the emotional science that measures the bonds we form with the brands we use and love. Top Intimate Brands outperform top brands in the S&P and Fortune 500 indices for revenue and profit. Consumers are also more willing to pay price premiums for Intimate Brands and less willing to live without them, according to the 2019 Brand Intimacy Report. MBLM leverages the yearly study to help client brands create, sustain and measure ultimate brand relationships.

“This year’s industry rankings have clear top performers with brands like Nescafe,” said William Shintani, managing partner of MBLM. “We’ve seen how powerful people’s rituals are, and it is clear by the results that Nescafé dominates. However, the fact that this industry is still so low in the Brand Intimacy rankings indicates there are significant opportunities for brands in the industry to better build emotional connections that specifically target the UAE market.”

Other notable findings for the beverages industry include:

13% of users in the study can’t live without brands from the beverages industry.
78% of users aged 18-34 feel an immediate emotional connection with Coca-Cola.
Nescafe ranked #1 within males, females and high-income users.
Nescafe has built strong bonds with female users, ranking #3 with the demographic in the overall study.
Red Bull, last year’s #1, dropped to #3.

To view more industry-specific data, please click here.

To download the full Brand Intimacy 2019 Report, please click here or explore the Data Dashboard, please click here.

Methodology: During 2018, MBLM with Praxis Research Partners conducted an online quantitative survey among 6,200 consumers in the U.S. (3,000), Mexico (2,000), and the United Arab Emirates (1,200). Participants were respondents who were screened for age (18 to 64 years of age) and annual household income ($35,000 or more) in the U.S. and socioeconomic levels in Mexico and the UAE (A, B, and C socioeconomic levels). Quotas were established to ensure that the sample mirrored census data for age, gender, income/socioeconomic level, and region. The survey was designed primarily to understand the extent to which consumers have relationships with brands and the strength of those relationships from fairly detached to highly intimate. It is important to note that this research provides more than a mere ranking of brand performance and was specifically designed to provide prescriptive guidance to marketers. We modeled data from over 6,200 interviews and approximately 56,000 brand evaluations to quantify the mechanisms that drive intimacy. Through factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and other sophisticated analytic techniques, the research allows marketers to better understand which levers need to be pulled to build intimacy between their brand and consumers. Thus, marketers will understand not only where their brand falls in the hierarchy of performance but also how to strengthen performance in the future.