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10 brands that UAE residents cannot live without

Dubai - Do you have some of these brands in your life?

Though Apple is closest to the heart of UAE residents, automobile brands dominated the list of top 10 most intimate brands for 2019, a new study released on Sunday revealed.
According to the Brand Intimacy 2019 Report from MBLM, Emirates airline jumped four places to 2nd place in the UAE and it is the only brand from the country which made it to the top 10 list.
Among others, US auto giant Ford comes third followed by Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Microsoft, Nescafe, Lexus, BMW and YouTube.
Despite their popularity and strong penetration, tech giants Google, Facebook and, Samsung didn't make it to the top 10.
Brand Intimacy is defined as a new paradigm that leverages and strengthens the emotional bonds between a person and a brand.

The MBLM survey results showed that despite a drop in its performance from 87.5 in 2017 to 73 in 2019, 32 per cent of UAE residents believe that they cannot live without Apple. Emirates continued to improve its performance from 51.1 in 2017 to 70.3 this year, with 21 per cent of the airline's users saying they cannot live without the brand.
In the automobile segment, 9 per cent of Ford users say they cannot live without the brand.
"The Emirates brand is performing extremely well as it continues to exceed expectations, delivering superior service and quality among its key demographics. Their strongest archetype is fulfillment, which is directly related to the delivery of superior quality of services. It also outperforms its competitors in the travel industry," said William Shintani, managing partner at MBLM.
"We are thrilled to see Ford climb from 10th in 2018 to third for 2019 - and to top the rankings as most favoured car brand," said Crystal Worthem, marketing director for Ford Middle East & Africa. "We're pleased to see that customers view Ford as an engaging brand with exciting vehicles - and this industry recognition of the work we've done drives us to do even more and be even better for the benefit of our customers here in the UAE and the region overall," Worthem added.
Overall percentages of intimate users across the three countries of the study showed that the UAE as well as Mexico has significantly higher levels of brand intimacy than the US, and that gap has increased slightly since last year. The UAE's percentage of intimate consumers remains the same, whereas Mexico's has increased from 33 per cent to 35 per cent. It was 21 per cent in the US.
The survey is based on responses from 6,200 consumers in 56,000 brand evaluations across 15 industries in the US, Mexico and UAE.
-waheedabbas@khaleejtimes.com