The study measures current customers, consumer recommendations and future shopping consideration to assess how retailers connect with consumers beyond their existing shopper base.
More than 70,000 consumers were interviewed across the region by Inside Retail Asia for its newly launched Brand Conviction Index: Asia’s Top 100 Retailers.
It surveyed customers across countries like China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, with 12 months of continuous data from YouGov BrandIndex up to May 31, 2026.
Also included is the Philippines, where shopping and fashion brands emerged as leaders. These are Zalora, ShopSM, Penshoppe and Bench, with with recommendation exceeding current usage for all four.
Zalora recorded the widest gap at 4.39 times its current customer base, followed by ShopSM at 3.72 times, while nearly a third of Filipinos currently shop at both Penshoppe and Bench, with recommendation higher for each.
In the index, ShopSM, which extends The SM Store online by linking delivery and click-and-collect to its physical footprint, ranked 80th.
Meanwhile, Penshoppe is in 83rd place, while and Bench is 92nd.
Across Asia, Swiss watchmaker Rolex ranked first. It is a feat because despite a buyer base that is small relative to the conviction it generates.
Among surveyed consumers, more consumers aspire to own one than currently do, with the gap between who buys from a brand and who believes in it reflectungt what the index has been designed to measure, and it produces results that challenge how retailers think about scale, advocacy, and future growth.
Meanwhile, JD.com ranks second, Flipkart in third, and the e-commerce giant Shopee in fourth.
“Most retail rankings tell you who is biggest,” said Robert Stockdill, Global Head of News, Inside Retail Asia. “The Brand Conviction Index tells you something more commercially important by showing which brands consumers truly believe in and how far that belief extends beyond their current customers.”
He also noted that the brands at the top of this index are not just the most believed-in, but are also the hardest to displace.
“And the brands that score well on advocacy, where more people recommend them than currently shop there, have something no marketing budget can manufacture. Their customers are doing the acquisition work for them,” added Stockdill.
Furthermore, the importance of the index is also seen within the specific time that it is released: the age of Agentic AI.
“This index matters now because the rules of retail are changing. Agentic AI is beginning to make purchase decisions on behalf of consumers. When that happens, the brands that have built genuine conviction, the ones consumers already trust and recommend, will be the ones AI systems surface first. Conviction is no longer just a brand metric but a commercial asset with a direct bearing on future revenue,” the Inside Retail Asia officer furthered.
They also found Asian retail becoming immensely competitive with more brands, more channels, more markets opening up, more global names chasing the same consumers.
“In that environment, conviction is not just a sustainable advantage but one that compounds over time. The brands that earn genuine belief from their market spend less to acquire customers, defend their position more effectively when competitors arrive, and build pipelines of future demand that no budget can replicate.”
Thus, this index shows that some of the strongest conviction in Asia is being built not by the biggest global names, but by local and regional retailers who have “earned something more valuable than awareness… they have earned trust,” Stockdill also said.
Meanwhile, Angela Smith, Head of Client Growth- APAC at YouGov said: “Conviction is a dimension of brand health that’s often overlooked, because it lives beyond the transaction. Our BrandIndex data lets us track not just who is shopping with a brand today, but who believes in it enough to recommend it to someone else — and that gap is often where the real growth story sits.”
“Continuous brand tracking helps businesses see how those perceptions evolve over time, and where brands are quietly gaining or losing ground. It’s essential to understand the various dimensions of brand health to properly evaluate performance,” she added.
