From a Betta fish brooch to a “dragon’s trove” of zircon eggs, here are seven pieces that’ve stuck with Associate Editor Lauren McLemore.
The Top American Brands, According to Public Perception
Market research firm YouGov has released its first BrandIndex, a list of companies that it says are currently resonating with consumers.

New York--Market research firm YouGov has released its first BrandIndex, which measures brands’ perceptions in the eyes of consumers to create various lists of the best American brands of 2017.
To compile the BrandIndex, YouGov interviewed more than 2.5 million consumers over a year’s time.
It then ranked companies on overall brand health, scoring them according to consumers’ perceptions of brand quality, value, impression, satisfaction, reputation and if they would recommend a brand to others.
The 10 highest-ranked brands in the United States overall are as follows.
1. Band-Aid
2. Amazon.com
3. Google
4. Craftsman
5. Dawn
6. YouTube
7. Clorox
8. M&M’s
9. Lowe’s
10. Quaker
Companies also were divided into industry categories and ranked within them. Industries covered included airlines, apparel and footwear, car makers, health insurance, retail clothing and TV networks.
While jewelry and watches didn’t earn their own category on the list, the Retail Discount category includes some fine jewelry and watch sellers, like Costco.
The highest-scoring discount retailer was Amazon.com, followed by Costco, eBay, Target and Walmart in fifth place. Walmart also received the No. 1 ranking for improvement in perception among the discount retailers from 2016 to 2017.
All rankings were based on YouGov BrandIndex’s data collected from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017.
For a list of full results across all industries, visit BrandIndex.com.
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