Brand loyalty among U.S. adults has reversed a decade-long decline, according to a CivicScience study, and the turnaround is being driven by the age group marketers have long considered least loyal.
The share of U.S. adults calling themselves "very loyal" to their favorite brands climbed from 31 percent in 2020 to 36 percent in 2026, the report said. Among adults under 35, the increase was about three times that of the general population. In 2020, loyalty peaked among 45- to 54-year-olds; by December 2025, it peaked among 18- to 24-year-olds, at 46 percent.
The findings draw on responses from more than one million U.S. adults surveyed between January 2020 and January 2026. Researchers said the forces behind loyalty have shifted: across 23 demographic groups, emotional connection to brands accounts for as much as 90 percent of the variation in self-reported loyalty, while service accounts for roughly half, price and deals 10 percent, and quality 2 percent.
John Dick, founder and CEO of CivicScience, said the long-held belief that brand loyalty is something consumers age into "is simply not true anymore," adding that the study has major implications for how companies weigh brand spending against performance marketing.
Loyalty is also no longer zero-sum, the report found. While average shoppers reported having fewer favorite brands than a few years ago, brand loyalists said they have more, with 85 percent of those polled loyal to multiple brands in at least a few categories. Adults 18 to 24 stood apart as both the most loyal and the most category-exclusive, tending to commit to one brand or a few within a category.
Mindset predicted loyalty better than demographics, the researchers said. Of 160 attributes tested, the strongest were attitudinal: shoppers who follow markets and the economy closely were 19 percentage points more likely than average to call themselves "very loyal." In one experiment, shoppers asked about loyalty in explicitly identity-based terms were measurably less likely to describe themselves as "very loyal" than those asked a neutral version of the question.
The report concluded that what sustains loyalty today "is not solely price or convenience," with emotional connection explaining the vast majority of variation in brand loyalty across demographic groups. Modern loyalty, the authors wrote, is an intentional, identity-infused relationship grounded in alignment, meaning and trust.
Originally reported by WWD