Apple tops the 2019 Women’s Choice Brand Rankings in Saudi Arabia

The smartphone giant has the most positive Impression among women in the country

Apple beats Almarai to become the top brand in the 2019 Women’s Choice Brand Rankings by YouGov. Amidst the launch of the new iPhones and Apple watch last year, the brand generated a lot of noise and has strengthened its appeal among women. Apple’s smartphone brand, iPhone, has likewise seen great improvement and places in second.

Fast food restaurant chain Al Baik has climbed from seventh in last year's YouGov BrandIndex Women's Rankings to third this year.

The rankings were compiled using the Impression score from YouGov’s daily brand tracker, BrandIndex, by asking respondents, “Which of the following brands do you generally have a positive/negative feeling about?” over the past 12 months.

Last year was a tough one for dairy brand Almarai. The rise in the price of milk by the brand generated substantial resentment among consumers and they took to social media to boycott the brand. Almarai’s perception among women in Saudi Arabia has declined subsequently, pulling it down from first to fifth place this year.

Dettol has moved up to sixth from eighth last year while Fairy and Alrajhi Bank are new entrants at eighth and ninth, respectively. Galaxy (the chocolates brand) makes a re-entry into the list at tenth, after dropping out last year.

Technology brands seem to have had a rather difficult year. Both WhatsApp and YouTube saw a decline in their ranks and have slipped down two spots from last year to fourth and seventh, respectively in 2019.

YouGov also revealed the 10 brands that made the largest improvement to their Impression scores over the past 12 months. mada is the most improved brand of the past year among women with a change in score of +11.5, going from an Impression score of 23.2 in last year's YouGov BrandIndex Women's Rankings to 34.7 this year.

Food and beverage brands seem to be resonating well with women in Saudi Arabia. Some of the top brands such as Maestro Pizza (+8.7), Coca-Cola (+8.2), Pepsi (+7.4), Kinder (+7.0) and Tasali (+5.9) are part of the top 10 improvers.

Chinese tech giant Huawei is also becoming popular amongst women and has shown a marked improvement in its score (+7.9), thereby becoming the fourth best improver of 2019.

The 501 brands in Saudi Arabia in YouGov BrandIndex were ranked using the Impression score, which asks respondents, “Overall, of which of the following brands do you have Positive/Negative impression?” Scores are net scores, calculated by subtracting the percentage of negative responses from the percentage of positive responses for each brand.

The Women’s Rankings chart shows the brands with the highest average Impression scores between February 1, 2018 and January 31, 2019. The Impression Improvers chart ranks the brands with the highest increase in Impression comparing the scores for the 12 months ending January 31, 2019 and the 12-month period ending January 31, 2018. To be included the year-over-year variance must be positive. Scores are representative amongst women.

All Impression scores listed have been rounded to a single decimal place, however, we have used additional precision to assign ranks.

All brands must be tracked for at least 6 months to be included in the rankings, and must have been tracked for at least 6 months in the prior year’s period (as well as being currently tracked) to appear in the movers tables.