Always On: Benchmark Your Brand’s Reputation vs. Competitors

Welcome to Always On. Each week, we’ll dig into a brand or audience trend you need to know about, tapping into Morning Consult Intelligence, our always-on insights platform powered by 15,000 daily surveys across 40+ countries. That means thousands of brands, audience deep dives, and enough fresh data to make your spreadsheets jealous. Sign-up here to get this email sent to you directly every week.

A strong reputation drives real business results: higher loyalty, increased purchase intent, and stronger consumer consideration. But to protect and grow your brand, you need to measure reputation in real time and benchmark it against competitors

Morning Consult’s Reputation Score™ combines five key metrics — trust, favorability, community impact, value, and employer reputation — into one clear, actionable number on a scale of 0-100. Updated daily, it gives you an early warning system for potential risks and opportunities

Our latest report, the 2025 Retail Reputation Score Benchmark Report, reveals how seven retail categories — from apparel to household goods — rank on Reputation Score™. See where your category stands:

Household goods brands top the rankings thanks to deep familiarity and everyday use. Download our report —  the 2025 Retail Reputation Score Benchmark Report — to go deeper into these categories and how different demographics view them. This week’s Always On is going to explore how brands can use the Reputation Score™ to benchmark their brand’s performance.

Going Deeper: Exploring the Demographics Behind Reputation Scores

A quick glance at the data suggests fragrance and color cosmetics brands are struggling. But a deeper look reveals that lower scores are driven by specific groups — like men, who are less familiar with these brands, and lower-income households, where budget pressures shape purchasing behavior.

Topline scores only tell part of the story. With Morning Consult Intelligence, you can segment by audience to uncover what’s really driving your brand’s reputation. Below, we show how Chanel outperforms competitors in the fragrance and color cosmetics category when viewed through this more detailed lens.

Chanel's Morning Consult Reputation™ Score by audience

Like other major brands in this group, Chanel doesn’t perform as well as with men or Gen Z. But benchmarked against others, Chanel performs better in the same time period for every audience. Chanel’s reputation is bolstered in part by the brand’s higher levels of awareness, which is likely in part because of the brand’s legacy status (it was established more than 100 years ago) and long-standing partnerships with high-profile celebrities.

Morning Consult clients can easily explore the Reputation Score™ of any audience or demographic we track. To do that, find your brand or build a table with a custom dashboard. Want to benchmark your own brand’s reputation score against your industry? Get in touch here.