Amazon has become the world’s most valuable brand, according to the 2019 BrandZ Top of the World’s Most Valuable Brands, published in June 2019 by WPP and Kantar on the New York Stock Exchange.

With a 52% increase in brand value over the previous year and reaching $315.5 billion, Amazon is surpassing Apple (second place, $ 309.5 billion) and Google (3rd place, $309 billion), both growing and but only 3% and 2% respectively. Amazon thus ends a 12-year period in which technology giants have dominated the top.

In the top 10 brands, Facebook remains in 6th place, while Alibaba climbed two places to 7th place thanks to a 16% increase compared to last year, reaching $131.2 billion. Thus, for the first time, Alibaba surpasses Tencent and becomes the Chinese brand with the highest value. Tencent is down three places to eighth, losing 27% to $130.9 billion last year due to a more unstable global climate.

Taking advantage of the problems that other social media platforms have in terms of trust and desirability, Instagram (44th place, worth $28.2 billion) has the fastest evolution this year, rising 47 places and increasing by 95% in value compared to last year. Instagram is now based on more than one billion users worldwide.

Lululemon, the yoga-inspired sports equipment company, is the second-largest growth brand to reach 77% more than the previous year and to a value of $6.92 billion.

Other brands that saw significant growth, such as Netflix (+ 65%, place 34, $34.3 billion), Amazon (+ 52%, place 1, $315.5 billion) and Uber (+ 51%, place 53, $24.2 billion). All this illustrates a world in which changes are rapidly occurring due to technology advancements, a world in which consumers increasingly value the rich experiences offered by brands.

Despite economic uncertainties, as a result of changing US-China trade tariffs, $328 billion was added last year to BrandZ’s top 100 most valuable brands in the world. Thus, the cumulative value of the brands reached $4.7 trillion – the approximate equivalent of the combined Gross Domestic Product of Spain, South Korea, and Russia.

Much of this value is generated by brands offering technology for consumers, which together collect more than $1 trillion. Examples include newcomer Xiaomi (74th place, $19.8 billion), a Chinese brand of mobile phones and devices, which also uses IoT – the Internet of Things to connect smart devices. This brand is witnessing an increase in demand in markets such as Russia, India or Malaysia.

Another Chinese brand, Meituan (78th place, $18.8 billion) is seen as a disruptive consumer technology platform, offering everything from food delivery, reservations, to renting a driver or bicycle. Meanwhile, Uber is using the eco-system model and expanding into other categories such as delivery services (food and other things), while Haier (place 89, $16.3 billion), the largest home appliance platform and IoT, is determined to create an eco-system open to brands along with its customers and partners.

The category of luxury products is the one with the highest growth (+ 29%), followed by retail (+ 25%), fueled by digital channels for the consumers of the Y and Z generations.

Asian brands enhance their presence in the top, with 15 Chinese, three Indian, and one Indonesian brand, bringing the total to 23 Asian brands in the top, including LIC and Tata Consultancy Services.

It’s worth mentioning a new generation of brands – the Z generation brands (released after 1996), which have a more accelerated growth rate because they add more value to the ranking each year – almost four times higher compared to brands that appeared between 1977 and 1995 (the Millenials Generation). A total of 23 Z-generation brands appear in the top 100 with an average age of 16 years compared to 18 millennial-generation brands that average 33 years.

The tariff war between China and the US has affected the growth of the top 100 brands, which decreased to 7% on average, compared to 2018. The consumer confidence was affected by the fact that the commercial tariffs had an impact on several categories – Auto, Logistics or Banking suffering the most.