September 20, 2018

The appliances industry ranked second to last in MBLM’s Brand Intimacy 2018 Report, which is the largest study of brands based on emotions. The top three in the industry were Samsung Appliances, KitchenAid and LG Appliances. The remaining brands in the Top 10 for the appliances industry were: Dyson, GE Appliances, Maytag, Whirlpool, Frigidaire, Kenmore and Bosch.

Brand intimacy is defined as a new paradigm that leverages and strengthens the emotional bonds between a person and a brand. MBLM’s study again revealed that top intimate brands in the U.S. surpassed the top brands in the Fortune 500 and S&P indices in revenue and profit over the past 10 years.

“Though appliances are getting ‘smarter,’ it looks like they have a steep road to climb to winning the hearts of consumers,” stated Mario Natarelli, managing partner at MBLM. “We see major potential for appliance brands to leverage some of the brand intimacy archetypes such as fulfillment and ritual to create stronger emotional bonds with consumers.”

Other notable appliances findings in MBLM’s Brand Intimacy 2018 Report include:

• The appliances industry ranked #14 out of the 15 industries surveyed, with an average Brand Intimacy Quotient of 11.8, which was well below the cross-industry average of 27.1.
• Fulfillment, which is related to exceeding expectations and providing superior service or quality, was the most dominant archetype in the category, and Samsung Appliances was the top-performing brand for fulfillment.
• GE Appliances was the top brand for nostalgia, the archetype associated with warm, poignant feelings of the past.
• Samsung Appliances was also the top brand in the category overall and ranked #1 for both men and women, as well as for millennials and users over 35.

The full Brand Intimacy 2018 Report and the Ranking Tool can be found at mblm.com/lab/brandintimacy-study/.

This year’s report contains the most comprehensive rankings of brands based on emotion, analyzing the responses of 6,000 consumers and 54,000 brand evaluations across 15 industries in the U.S., Mexico and UAE. MBLM’s reports and interactive Brand Ranking Tool showcase the performance of almost 400 brands, revealing the characteristics and intensity of the consumer bonds.

During 2017, MBLM conducted an online quantitative survey among 6,000 consumers in the United States (3,000), Mexico (2,000), and the United Arab Emirates (1,000). Participants were respondents who were screened for age (i.e. 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 study provides more than a mere ranking of brand performance and was specifically designed to provide prescriptive guidance to marketers. The data was modeled from a total of 54,000 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 brands and consumers.