Levi Strauss, Macy’s, Dicks Sporting Goods, Dollar Tree, UPS, Amazon Among Loyalty Gold Awards in Brand Keys’ 2025 Loyalty Index
Brand Loyalty Assessments Identify New Bottom Lines For Brands in 2025: Which Brands Will Dominate, What Customers Acquisition Will Cost, What Brands Can Save & What Lifetime Profits Brands Can Expect
NEW YORK, NY, January 27, 2025 – Results of the 28th annual Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index (CLEI) identified the brands which will dominate their categories in 2025 and revealed dramatic differences in how loyalty operates as the most accurate predictor of consumer purchasing behavior, sales, brand market share, and profits.
The index surveyed more than 81,000 consumers aged 16 to 65, examining their attitudes toward and their relationships with 1,100 brands in 104 categories. The yearly study is designed to determine the drivers of brand loyalty, including how the consumer views the category, compares offerings and ultimately buys the product. Rankings are based on a brand’s ability to successfully deliver on drivers the consumer desire most, which are predictive of the highest levels of engagement and loyalty over the next 12 to 18 months.
“The impact of loyalty on brand profitability has increased so significantly since we released those very first calculations in 1997,” said Robert Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys, the New York-based brand loyalty and engagement research firm that conducts the annual research, “We introduced gold, silver, and bronze levels to this year’s CLEI to specify brand loyalty hierarchies in the companies consumers evaluated.”
2025 Brand Loyalty Award winners in the Retail sector include:
Apparel Athletic Shoes Department Stores
- Gold Levi Strauss Gold Nike Gold Macy’s
- Silver Zara Silver Adidas Silver TJ Maxx
- Bronze Old Navy / Ralph Lauren Bronze New Balance Bronze Kohl’s
Dollar Discount Firearms
- Gold Dollar Tree Gold Walmart Gold Smith & Wesson
- Silver Dollar General Silver Target Silver Glock
- Bronze Family Dollar Bronze Best Buy Bronze Ruger
Home Improvement Natural Markets Online Payments
- Gold Home Depot Gold Trader Joe’s Gold PayPal
- Silver Lowe’s Silver Whole Foods Silver Apple Pay
- Bronze Ace Bronze The Fresh Market Bronze Google Pay / Venmo
Online Shoes Online Pharmacy
- Gold Zappos Gold Amazon Gold Walgreen’s
- Silver Amazon Silver Walmart Silver CVS
- Bronze Footlocker / Nike Bronze Etsy Bronze Rite Aid
Price Clubs Shipping Sporting Goods
- Gold Costco Gold UPS Gold Dick’s
- Silver Sam’s Silver FedEx Silver Academy
- Bronze BJ’s Bronze USPS Bronze Big 5
Along with a brand loyalty hierarchy, the survey diagnostics identified:
- Four category-specific path-to-purchase loyalty drivers (such as “Right Brand, Right Design” in Automotive, “Device-Friendly News” for Cable News, and “Business Success” for MFP Copiers).
- The expectations consumers hold for each driver.
- The attributes, benefits, and values that form driver components, including percent-contribution to engagement, loyalty, and profitability.
A complete list of the 2025 CLEI Brand Loyalty Award winners can be found at https://brandkeys.com/customer-loyalty-engagement-index/
Loyalty And Brand Profitability
The 2025 research revealed the following economic facts about loyalty:
- It now costs 15 to 22 times more to recruit a new customer than to keep an existing one (up 20% from 1997).
- An increase in loyalty of 5% can increase lifetime profits per customer by as much as 86% (down 9% from initial 1997 measures, but still exceptionally high, especially when digital, ecommerce is factored in. Brand diversification that has contributed to a 52% increase in the number of brands.
- Depending on the sector, an increase in loyalty of 2% can be the equivalent of a 28% across-the-board cost reduction program (adjusted for 2025 dollars, that’s an increase of 11%).
“Economic dynamics like this drive loyalty and correlate extraordinarily highly with brand market share (0.87),” observed Passikoff. The CLEI has consistently found loyal customers to be six times more likely to engage with a brand, think of the brand first, buy it (and buy it again), and pay more attention to its marketing and social networking activities, which results in increased market shares and bottom lines.
Marketplace Proof
“The proof, of course, is the marketplace itself,” noted Passikoff. “Discover has been #1 in the Credit Card category for 27 consecutive years, Google 25 years for Search, Domino’s 21 years, Dunkin’ 19 years for Out-of-Home Coffee, Konica Minolta 18 years for MFP Copiers, Hyundai and AT&T Wireless 16 years each, Amazon 14 years, and Home Depot 13 years.
Loyalty Works Differently Today
“The loyalty paradigm has changed dramatically over the past decade,” observed Passikoff. “Happily, consumer loyalty can be measured, achieved, and leveraged. But it isn’t something that just shows up one day. It isn’t awareness or satisfaction no matter how much you think you have. And it absolutely isn’t something one can find on a 10-point scale. Loyalty is more complex today just as the consumer, the marketplace and marketing have become more complex. But, as research has proven, brands best at building loyalty win more customers, more sales, and much bigger market shares.”
Methodology
For the 2025 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index (CLEI) survey, 81,348 consumers, 16 to 65 years of age, from the nine US Census Regions, self-selected categories in which they are consumers and assessed brands for which they are customers. This was completed via an independently validated combination of psychological inquiry and higher order statistical analyses (with a test/re-test reliability of 0.93 and results generalizable at the 95% confidence level), which has been successfully used in B2B, B2C, and D2C categories in 35 countries. This year, Brand Keys examined 1,100 brands in 104 categories.
For more information about the 2025 CLEI survey results, Brand Loyalty icon award logos you can use in your marketing and advertising, or information about integrating predictive loyalty metrics into your marketing, branding, and advertising efforts, contact Leigh Benatar at leighb@brandkeys.com.