USA TODAY's Most Trusted Brands 2025 Methodology Overview
USA TODAY’s Most Trusted Brands 2025 highlights the brands in the U.S. that consumers trust the most, based on various relevant metrics. Our study involved analyzing publicly available data and conducting a large-scale, confidential online survey among U.S. consumers.
Over 24,000 participants and more than 359,000 brand reviews provided valuable insights across five key trust categories: likelihood of purchase, alignment with personal values, emotional connection, reliability, and trust and transparency.
To ensure responses reflected real-world experiences, participants were asked to evaluate companies they were familiar with and had direct experiences with. The survey included adults aged 18 to 70, with a balanced male-to-female ratio.
The list of top trusted brands excluded companies that have recently been involved in significant legal, ethical, or reputational issues, such as data breaches, major recalls, lawsuits, unethical practices, or environmental damage, Plant-A used Onclusive’s media monitoring platform Critical Mention to identify such incidents.
The list of awarded brands can be found here.
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Rankings Placement
Placement in the Rankings (defined below) is a positive recognition based on research of publicly available data sources from the time period in question.
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