BMW, AGL, Apple, Harris Farm Markets, Qantas, AFR and more feature on Roy Morgan Premium Brand rankings
Roy Morgan’s 2023 Premium Brand rankings has dropped, with brands including American Express, BMW, AGL, and The Australian Financial Review, included.
Australia is in a two-speed economy, according to Roy Morgan, and each speed has a “fundamentally different consumer mindset”, said Levine. The ‘fast-lane’ is the New Economic Order (NEO) mindset, in which 90% of consumers are classified as ‘big spenders’, who happily spend on frequent, premium experiences.
Meanwhile, the traditional mindset, or the ‘slow-lane’, are price-sensitive, reluctant-spending consumers.
Roy Morgan’s 2023 Premium Brand rankings focuses on the spending of over 5 million NEO consumers.
In the financial services sector, Macquarie Bank was the top-rated bank, while UniSuper was the most premium superannuation brand. American Express was the winner of the payments category, and BUPA took out top-rated private health insurance. NEOs chose AAMI for general insurance, and Zurich for life insurance.
In automotive, which Levine said is always a close competition, BMW was the top-rated, beating out Audi and Mercedes, who came second and third respectively.
Meanwhile, across retail, Harris Farm Markets topped the supermarket category.
“Its win is more significant, given its largely concentrated in New South Wales,” she said. “In other words, it was up against national brands, but still came out on top.”
In fashion, which Levine said was another competitive category, Country Road was the top-rated brand, followed by David Jones, Amazon and The Iconic.
Qantas won the airline category across domestic and international preferences.
“Virgin Australia was close, very strong in domestic travel. But international preferences pushed Qantas over the line to win”, Levine said.
Virgin Australia was close in domestic travel, but not international
On the energy sector, Levine said: “”The energy sector is heavily commoditised, so there was a very close call on whether there would actually be a winner.”
However, AGL “had enough points to get it across the line”, topping both the electricity and gas provider categories.
“The influence of Mike Cannon-Brooks on AGL and his renewable strategy for the brand played well with NEOs, particularly with super NEOs,” she said.
Vodafone has been rated the top premium mobile phone and home internet provider while Apple has topped the smartphone category.
Across the media sector, the Australian Financial Review has won the cross-platform news brand category, beating out The Australian and The Saturday Paper.
The AFR has been rated the top premium cross-platform news brand
Australian Gourmet Traveller won the cross-platform magazine category, while Domain topped the newspaper-inserted magazine category.
Apple TV+ topped the video streaming category, followed by Paramount+. Amazon Music won music streaming, followed closely by Apple Music.
“At first I was surprised not to see Spotify on the list,” said Levine. “But then I remembered that a brand so dominant attracts everyone, so statistically, its hard for NEOs to stand out from the crowd.
“That’s why we didn’t see Netflix on the list for video streaming either,” she said.
Finally, Luxury Escapes topped the online travel brand category.
Levine acknowledged that not all media categories are covered in Roy Morgan’s Premium Brands rankings.
“There’s radio, or TV, and there are NEO preferences in these categories, but they are not significant enough to meet the strict rules that put a winning brand ahead of the rest,” she said.
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Lauren McNamara is a journalist at Mumbrella, covering the creative and PR beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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topics
2023 Premium Brands rankings
Amazon
Apple
BMW
Michele Levine
Qantas
Roy Morgan
The Australian Financial Review
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