The GCBI is Canada's behavioural intelligence platform for understanding how Canadians actually perceive your brand.

Most brand tracking tells you whether awareness, consideration, or satisfaction is changing. The GCBI tells you why your brand earns trust—or loses it—by measuring how Canadians perceive it across seven fundamental Canadian values.

Because brands are no longer judged solely on products or advertising. They are judged as institutions.

Consumers increasingly ask:

• Is this company honest?

• Does it treat people with respect?

• Does it reflect my values?

• Is it genuinely sustainable?

• Does it feel authentically Canadian?

These perceptions influence loyalty, advocacy, resilience during crises, pricing power, and long-term brand equity.

The GCBI provides an independent benchmark showing where your brand stands—not only overall, but against competitors, industries, provinces, generations, and dozens of demographic groups.

Instead of relying solely on internal surveys or campaign metrics, you gain an external view of how your brand is positioned in the minds of Canadians.

There are many research products that measure customer satisfaction, brand awareness, and purchase intent.

The GCBI measures something different: behavioural legitimacy.

It measures whether Canadians perceive your organization as embodying the values they increasingly expect from trusted institutions.

This perspective is especially valuable because today's consumers don't simply buy products. They decide which organizations deserve their trust.

Subscribers to the data don't simply receive rankings. They gain answers to strategic questions such as:

Where is our reputation strongest—and weakest? Understand how Canadians perceive your brand across seven behavioural dimensions and identify where perception gaps exist.

Which competitors are quietly outperforming us? See where competitors are building stronger value-based positions before those shifts become visible in market share.

Which customer segments perceive us differently? Compare perceptions across provinces, generations, political orientations, income groups, newcomers, long-time Canadians, and more. This helps identify opportunities that broad national averages often hide.

Which brand values deserve investment? Not every perception weakness deserves equal attention. The GCBI helps identify which dimensions offer the greatest opportunity for differentiation and long-term brand strength.

How is our reputation evolving over time? Track movement across reporting periods to determine whether strategic initiatives are strengthening—or weakening—public perception.

How do we compare against Canada's strongest brands? Benchmark your organization against recognized leaders and understand what differentiates their positioning.

The 2026 GCBI is based on a national survey of 3,441 Canadian adults (18 years and older) residing in Canada's ten provinces (territories excluded). The sample was designed to be nationally representative of the adult Canadian population using benchmarks from the 2021 Canadian Census, with quotas and weighting applied across key demographic characteristics, including age, gender, race, and political affiliation.

Respondents evaluated Canadian brands with which they were familiar across seven core value dimensions: Friendliness, Niceness, Respectfulness, Honesty, Tolerance, Adventurousness, and Sustainability. Ratings were collected using standardized survey measures and transformed to a common 0–100 scale.

Brand-level estimates were generated using Bayesian shrinkage estimation to improve the stability and reliability of scores, particularly for brands with smaller respondent samples. Dimension scores were then combined to produce each brand's overall GCBI score, calculated as a composite index representing the average performance across the seven dimensions.

The GCBI provides an independent, nationally benchmarked measure of how Canadians perceive leading Canadian brands across values that shape trust, reputation, and institutional standing.