Mar­ket research firm YouGov has released its 2014 Glob­al Rank­ings of brand sen­ti­ment and revealed ecom­merce giant Ama­zon remains the best-per­ceived brand in the U.S. What oth­er brands are among the top 10 favorites of U.S. con­sumers, and why?

Call­ing it “the earth’s most cus­tomer-cen­tric com­pa­ny,” online mar­ket­ing expert Bryan Eisen­berg said there are sev­er­al rea­sons Ama­zon is able to main­tain its lead, which essen­tial­ly include focus­ing on inputs rather than out­puts.

In oth­er words, instead of zero­ing in on sales, con­ver­sions, and traf­fic fig­ures, Ama­zon has made selec­tion, price, ship­ping, and cus­tomer ser­vice its pri­or­i­ties.

To wit: Ama­zon has five to sev­en times the cat­e­go­ry selec­tion of any of its com­peti­tors and has built soft­ware to mon­i­tor prices and makes price changes over 2.5 mil­lion times per day, Eisen­berg said.

“So if you’re look­ing for TVs, they’re going to have 50 to 70 ver­sus Best Buy with 10 and from a price point of view, they’re going to be some­where between 5 and 13 per­cent less than their top five com­peti­tors,” Eisen­berg said.

In addi­tion, Ama­zon has opti­mized its ware­hous­es so that 90+ per­cent of its items ship from a near­by loca­tion, Eisen­berg said.

He also notes that Ama­zon ranks 13 per­cent high­er than its com­peti­tors on the Amer­i­can Cus­tomer Sat­is­fac­tion Index because “every­one from the CEO down has to sit at least two days every two years on the cus­tomer ser­vice front lines.”

Eisen­berg said oth­er brands should take a page from Amazon’s book and strive to be more cus­tomer-cen­tric, which essen­tial­ly means under­stand­ing what the inputs are for their own unique busi­ness­es.

He also cites Ama­zon CEO Jeff Bezos’ acces­si­bil­i­ty with his wide­ly known [email protected] email address as anoth­er key dif­fer­en­tia­tor between Ama­zon and oth­er brands and as anoth­er rea­son it ranks so high in brand sen­ti­ment.

“It’s those inputs,” Eisen­berg said. “They know that if they take care of prices, selec­tion, avail­abil­i­ty and the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence that out­puts in the long term will take care of them­selves.”

Kristin Kovn­er, pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing firm K‑Squared Strate­gies, said it’s note­wor­thy Ama­zon topped the list even before its suc­cess at the Gold­en Globes.

“As Ama­zon moves into more areas of con­tent and com­merce – includ­ing offline – it will be inter­est­ing to see if they main­tain that spot next year,” she said.

Beyond Ama­zon, YouGov attrib­ut­es stream­ing con­tent to the rise of YouTube and Net­flix, which each have three spots on its world­wide lists. In The U.S., YouTube was ranked sec­ond and Net­flix fol­lowed in third.

Quick ser­vice chain Sub­way ranked fourth in the U.S., which YouGov says “remains one of the fastest-grow­ing restau­rant fran­chis­es world­wide.”

Glob­al­ly, tech­nol­o­gy and tele­com brands like Sam­sung, Apple, and Google that lead the pack. In the U.S., they come in at fifth, sixth, and sev­enth, respec­tive­ly.

YouGov attrib­ut­es Samsung’s place on the U.S. list to its “break­neck pace of prod­uct intro­duc­tions,” while Google has con­tin­ued “to evolve into home inno­va­tion, health­care, anti-aging and robot­ics.”

Home improve­ment chain Lowe’s was ranked eighth, in part because of its #Lowes­Fix­in­Six Vines, which have been wide­ly tout­ed as an effec­tive use of the plat­form, accord­ing to YouGov.

And round­ing out the top U.S. brands are Ford in ninth place and Chee­rios in 10th.

YouGov points to Chee­rios’ 2014 Super Bowl ad, Gra­cie, which fea­tured an inter­ra­cial fam­i­ly and has 5.7 mil­lion views to date, as a fac­tor in its place­ment.

To deter­mine the rank­ings, YouGov asks respon­dents, “If you’ve heard any­thing about the brand in the last two weeks, through adver­tis­ing, news or word of mouth, was it pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive?” and assigns a score from 100 to ‑100 with a zero score equal­ing a neu­tral posi­tion based on that feed­back.

Tes­sa Wegert, com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Enlight­en, not­ed that many of the U.S. brands are in the dig­i­tal and tech space.

“We can attribute this to the ongo­ing shift in con­sumer behav­ior and our increased con­sump­tion of dig­i­tal media, but I have to believe that brand sto­ry­telling plays a part as well,” she said. “There was so much focus on qual­i­ty, val­ue-dri­ven con­tent last year, and that mes­sage has made it to con­sumers. If they asso­ciate Ama­zon, YouTube, Net­flix, or Apple with deliv­er­ing worth­while enter­tain­ment through their prod­ucts and dig­i­tal plat­forms, it stands to rea­son that their per­cep­tion of those brands will be more pos­i­tive.”

Kovn­er agreed, say­ing the num­ber of dig­i­tal brands shows how per­va­sive dig­i­tal media has become in con­sumers’ every­day lives, as well as how much media bud­gets have grown.

“It’s inter­est­ing that many of the dig­i­tal brands are so per­son­al­ized to each user. The ‘some­thing for every­one’ phe­nom­e­non is as true of YouTube as it is of Ama­zon and Net­flix, so per­haps con­sumers are respond­ing to the idea that these mas­sive plat­forms pro­vide what­ev­er they need,” Kovn­er said.

Why do you think U.S. con­sumers rank these brands so high­ly?