Singaporeans show brand loyalty, to a point

The top 10 brands in Singapore remain largely unchanged, but elsewhere in the top 100, 17 new entrants made the list.

Consumer tastes saw quite a few changes in Singapore in 2017, with no less than 17 new entries to the top 100 brands list. The higher ranking of these are completely new entrants thanks to the addition of the ecommerce payments and transport/ride-sharing categories in this year’s data.

Visa tops the lot, entering fresh at number 20, followed closely by Mastercard at 25, with PayPal further down the line at 44. Uber starts its Top 1000 Singapore life at 58, just ahead of Grab at 63. At the lower end there have been many changes, with the likes of Milo, Nescafe and Lenovo being new entrants.

The English Premier League, extremely popular among Singapore sports fans, also debuted at a respectable 49. Moreover, Heineken and Carlsberg returned to the top 100 at the expense of local beer giant Tiger, which slipped to 118 this year.

The biggest loser inside last year’s top 100, by some distance, is Nikon. The brand has seen a dramatic global slump and Singapore is no different: from 31 last year, Nikon plunged a whopping 100 places to 131 this year.

Life at the top remained broadly the same as 2016, with the same nine companies heading the list. Samsung continues to reign supreme, followed by Apple, but beloved local supermarket brand NTUC Fairprice has jumped two places to third, supplanting Sony which drops to fourth. NTUC Fairprice’s brand success comes in stark contrast to its rival Cold Storage, known locally for catering far more to expats – it plummeted out of the top 100 from 64 last year to 114 in 2017.

By far the most notable local brand success was enjoyed by telco giant SingTel. Having put a lot of effort into its OTT TV offering and more competitive mobile pricing, among other things, SingTel saw a significant 22-place leap in this year’s top 100, rising to 10 from 32 last year. By contrast, rival StarHub saw no such progress, in fact slipping 11 places to 35.

Other big movers up the ladder include Philips, which has seen real success in Singapore as a trusted home appliance brand. Its 20-place rise has seen it move inside the top 30 to 27. The largest leap in the top 100 goes jointly to Estee Lauder and infant formula brand Dumex. Both moved up 29 places to 52 and 67 respectively. A smaller but notable gain given the effort the brand has gone to in localising its products is Starbucks, which gained eight places to finish 15 this year.

On the wrong side of the numbers, Yahoo has seen a significant drop from 38 to 65, which is somewhat unsurprising given the turmoil the brand has endured in the last 18 months. The rapid rise of food delivery companies in Singapore may have been a significant factor in Pizza Hut’s 27-place slide from 46 to 73 this year.