Great Canadian Brand Index

The Great Canadian Brand Index™ (GCBI) is the only index of how Canadians see their own brands. Instead of ranking companies by revenue or visibility, it focuses on how Canadians actually perceive the brands they encounter—a far stronger predictor of long‑term customer and brand loyalty.

The index evaluates how Canadians see their own brands across seven core values: Friendliness, Niceness, Respectfulness, Honesty, Tolerance, Adventurousness, and Sustainability. These values reflect the emotional and moral dimensions that shape how Canadians decide which brands they trust, support, and recommend.

Built on established social science research, the GCBI captures the deeper psychological forces that drive market share, profitability, and cultural relevance. It reveals not just which brands are popular, but which ones genuinely embody the values Canadians care about.

We surveyed 3,441 Canadians aged 18 or older in all ten provinces for the 2026 GCBI. The sample was representative of the population based on the 2021 Canadian Census on age, gender, race, and political views. They rated each listed Canadian brand on each of the values of being nice, friendly, honest, respectful, adventurous, tolerant, and sustainable, and these ratings were weighted using Bayesian shrinkage and then averaged to produce overall rankings on the final GCBI list.

A company can already buy custom research telling them consumers rate them 7.8/10 on honesty or even customer satisfaction. But that number has little meaning in isolation, with each company measuring outcomes differently.

The GCBI answers questions that custom research often can't:

• How does our Honesty score compare with every other major Canadian brand?

• Are we improving relative to the market, or is everyone improving?

• Which industries are redefining Canadians' expectations of Respectfulness or Sustainability?

• Which brands are becoming the reference point for a particular value?

In other words, the GCBI transforms brand perception from an internal metric into a market-wide behavioural benchmark.

Learn more about how we can help you understand your brand better in today’s competitive marketplace. Access our data via subscription or contact us today!