YPulse constantly asks young people what they think about brands in our ongoing brand tracker surveys, which assess how the biggest youth brands are performing against 20 unique diagnostics. Pro users can access the Brand Tracker dashboards to explore this data, and their own brands’ performance among Gen Z and Millennials, in many ways.
But brand affinity is complex and is constantly evolving. Young consumers’ purchasing behaviors evolve rapidly, especially in the era of micro-trends. Gen Z and Millennials are open to a wide array of diverse influences (think of the rise of influencers vs traditional celebs). This is why YPulse also asks the unaided question “What is your favorite brand” in every one of the thousands of brand tracker surveys we field annually. By allowing young consumers to answer as they like, in an open-end question, we can see what brands have the most brand love with Gen Z and Millennials, who can openly tell us what brands they like and the reason behind their preferences. We recently launched a new way to explore that data: the Consumer Verbatims dashboard. The Consumer Verbatims data shows the top favorite brands and allows users to see the reasons why they were named. It also helps brands to make strategic decisions by discovering new competitors and potential challengers within their industry.
Gen Z and Millennials in the U.K., Spain, Italy, Germany, and France are asked “What is your favorite brand?” without being prompted, and these are the brands that have been mentioned most by 13-39-year-olds in the Western Europe region over the last year:
Top 10 Favorite Brands (unaided)
13-39-year-olds in Western Europe
- Apple
- Nike
- Samsung
- Adidas
- Zara
- Amazon
- Netflix
- Nivea
- Sony
- IKEA
Apple and Nike are most-mentioned as favorites in Western Europe
On the podium of young Europeans’ top brands, Apple and Nike are in first and second place. Next in line is Samsung, and then the first European brand on the list — Adidas. YPulse already told you how young consumers in Western Europe love American brands so it should not come as a surprise that their top two brands are American. Apple is the top tech brand among young consumers in Western Europe, and we knew about young Europeans’ love story with Nike for a while now, which they describe as one of the overall coolest brands, the brand they feel the strongest sense of community around, and the brand with the highest YPulse+ score.
Of course, “Other brands” sits at the very top of the ranking–a collection of the many brands that are mentioned by young people that YPulse is not currently tracking. Most are not being named by enough to appear in the overall ranking, but YPulse uses these responses to keep tabs on up-and-comers and ensure that we’re always tracking the most relevant brands to young people.
Quality is the top reason why young Europeans like a brand
YPulse doesn’t just ask young people to tell us their favorite brand, we also ask “Why is that your favorite brand?” and then analyze their responses so that our Pro users can see exactly what’s drawing young consumers to the brands they love. We code their “why” responses into common categories to show the top reasons that brands are named:
For the ranking presented above, young consumers in Western Europe were most likely to say “quality” was the reason the brand is a favorite for six brands out of nine, and it’s the top attribute for the first four brands in the ranking. When they think of their favorite brands, Gen Z and Millennials are associating them with top quality, according to the Consumer Verbatims ranking.
When it comes to price, young Brits love PRIMARK — their favorite brand in the Consumer Verbatims in the U.K. with the attribute “price”
A great way to use the Consumer Verbatims is to track how brands are doing in one of the seven countries where YPulse constantly monitors brand affinity. In this example, we’ve selected “United Kingdom” in the country list to find out what young Brits say their favorite brand is, and filtered for the brands that are most likely to be named as favorites because of “price.” Here is the result:
This time, Nike and Apple are not on top of the list. Fast fashion is taking the lead among young U.K. consumers with Primark, H&M, and ASOS making it to the top 5. Primark is hugely popular among Gen Z and Millennials in the U.K., who famously queued for hours when the Irish brand reopened its stores post-COVID. The brand recently made the headlines for taking a pledge to freeze the price of all its children’s clothing lines, to help the U.K.’s most vulnerable consumers: parents with young children. The company’s executives have also just made the decision not to raise prices despite the current energy crisis in the U.K.
Young consumers in Western Europe have a complicated relationship with the fast-fashion industry, which we explored in our recent fashion and style survey, and will be looking at further in our upcoming trend report. These gens are budget-conscious, and consistently tell YPulse that they love a bargain. This is especially true for British young consumers, who are increasingly worried about the cost-of-living crisis. But at the same time, they clearly still love affordable fashion brands (as their counterparts in North America do as well) and though they may have some climate concerns ultimately these are some of their favorite brands, especially when they’re thinking about price.
YPulse Pro users can access the Consumer Verbatims Dashboard here.
Don’t have a YPulse Western Europe paid account? Find out more here.
