Sriram “Ram” Natarajan is now GIA’s senior vice president of laboratory operations and is based out of the lab’s headquarters in Carlsbad.
These Brands Have the Best Word-of-Mouth Among Millennials
Social media channels, entertainment and retail top the list of a survey conducted by YouGov Brand Index.
New York--YouGov Brand Index, which tracks the public perception of brands around the world, released the results of a study conducted among millennials to assess what brands have the best word-of-mouth perception among them.
From Sep. 1, 2015 to Aug. 31, 2017, YouGov asked 18 to 34 year olds if they heard anything positive about the 1,500 brands YouGov tracks in the United States, whether through advertisements, news or word-of-mouth.
From there, participants identified which of these brands they had personally talked about with family or friends, whether in-person or online, in the past two weeks.
Brands were then ranked by YouGov using this data, with Facebook nagging the top spot as the company with the most positive and frequent word-of-mouth mentions, followed by Netflix and H-E-B, a San Antonio, Texas-based grocery store chain.
The fourth most-mentioned brand was Walmart, followed by Victoria’s Secret, YouTube and Snapchat.
Amazon ranked eighth on the list, Starbucks ninth and Monster Energy Beverages 10th.
Researchers also compared the data collected in 2016 versus 2017 and listed the brands whose word-of-mouth rankings had improved the most.
Lane Bryant had the most improved word-of-mouth ranking, followed by CheapTickets, Beats by Dr. Dre, Redbox and Nintendo Wii.
The sixth most improved brand was Payless, then Forever 21, Tesla, Royal Caribbean Cruises and GE.
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