Who are America’s most recommended brands?

A new analysis from YouGov reveals that the most recommended brand in 2022 among its current customers is supermarket chain H-E-B. Word of mouth is one of the most influential forms of brand awareness and credibility, with people far more likely to trust the recommendations of someone they know over impersonal advertising.

The grocery store brand leads all other US brands with a score of 89.5 for Recommend —which measures the percentage of a brand’s customers who would recommend it to a friend or colleague. And while H-E-B's footprint sits predominately in the Lone Star state, it is the brand’s understanding of the nuances of this market that seems to make H-E-B so successful.

Speaking at an event earlier this year, President of Food and Drug Operations at San Antonio-based H-E-B Scott McClelland said, “We did stuff that a big national competitor couldn’t, wouldn’t, or didn't do. We knew we had an advantage because as Texans, we eat differently than people in Arkansas. And we live differently.”

The size and geography of the Lone Star state also offers plenty of opportunities for store-to-store differentiation. Each store is crafted to the specific area and as McClelland describes it, “not only do people in Fort Worth eat, or Texas eat differently than people in New York and California, people in Fort Worth eat differently than people in Houston. And frankly...people in Fort Worth will eat differently than the other side, based on your ethnicity, income and education level.”


Retail brands dominate in terms of word-of-mouth recommendations and customer loyalty this year, with four of the top five performers in YouGov’s Recommend Rankings drawn from the sector. Following closely behind H-E-B is outdoor gear purveyor REI (88.8), grocery chain Trader Joe‘s (87.4), beer brand Guinness (86.7) and discount grocery retailer Aldi (86.6).

Wine brand Stella Rosa also impresses with a Recommend score of 86.5. The award-winning purveyor of sweet wines offers more than 30 different styles of flavored drink, leaving plenty of options for customers to laud and endorse at least one bottle to others.

Nintendo is no stranger to our Recommend Rankings, after earning the sixth spot last year. In 2022, the brand is the seventh ranked brand with a score of 86.5. The video game console and game maker released a new OLED version of its popular Switch console in October of last year and just added a special edition colorway themed after the Splatoon game series. Nintendo’s high Recommend ranking reflects its success this year and comes just at the onset of the busy end of year shopping season.

The landmark reversal of Roe v. Wade, which provided a constitutional right to an abortion, by the US Supreme Court in June of this year brought Planned Parenthood to the forefront of the national conversation. The nonprofit organization provides access to reproductive health care and ranks ninth with a score of 86.2 in our Recommend Ranking.

Southern Poverty Law Center (86.3) and shoe brand Skechers (86.1) round out this year’s list of the top recommended brands in America.

Want to see how other markets compare? Our annual report highlights the top 10 recommended brands in each market across 55 countries globally. Click here to get your copy.

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Methodology

• The rankings are based on YouGov BrandIndex’s positive Recommend score, which measures the percentage of a brand’s customers who would recommend it to a friend or colleague.
• Every brand in our Rankings has a minimum sample of 300 and has been tracked for at least 6 months, with all scores being rounded to a single decimal place.
• The rankings show the brands with the highest average Recommend score between June 1, 2021 - May 31, 2022 compared to June 1, 2020 - May 31, 2021 for the top improvers.
• Scores are representative of the general population unless specified (some markets are representative of the online population).
• The Rankings data can be further developed with YouGov Recommend+, a fresh approach to understanding consumer advocacy. YouGov Recommend+ is a highly cost-effective NPS® diagnostics approach that gives marketers the full picture on what drives existing and potential promoters by speaking directly to those customers who recommend your brand.

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