Japanese business company Nikkei BP Consulting recently released the results of its brand power evaluation survey Brand Japan 2026, revealing some interesting insight in how the popularity and influence of domestic and overseas brands varies across generations. As reported by Nikkei, the survey suggests that many majorly influential domestic brands, like Toyota, are declining in popularity among Japanese people under 20 years old. But interestingly enough, “Nintendo Switch,” and “Nintendo” ranked as the top 2nd and 3rd brands for the demographic, beating “Pokémon” and “Disney.”
The “general consumer edition” of the survey, conducted in November last year, covered over 1,000 different brands with a sample of 37,000 respondents. Ranking the most influential brands across all generations vs among people under 20 years old, Nikkei concludes that that there is a big generational gap when it comes to brand trust – particularly in the electric and automotive sectors. While Panasonic, Sony and Toyota take the 4th, 10th and 26th place in the overall ranking, to those under 20, these brand names fall to 27th, 40th and 149th place respectively.
The top 10 brands ranking among people under 20 years old yielded some interesting results as well, most notably the immense popularity of the Nintendo Switch brand.
| Rank among respondents under 20 | Brand name | Rank among all generations |
| 1 | YouTube | 2 |
| 2 | Nintendo Switch | 59 |
| 3 | Nintendo | 12 |
| 4 | Daiso | 3 |
| 5 | Muji | 5 |
| 6 | LINE | 31 |
| 7 | Pokémon | 201 |
| 8 | Saizeriya | 13 |
| 9 | Amazon | 18 |
| 10 | Disney | 14 |
According to the data, Nintendo Switch ranks as the 59th brand name by popularity overall, however, it jumps as high as number 2 among the younger demographic. Furthermore, Nintendo Switch also tops the Nintendo and Disney brand names, ranked 3rd and 10th in the list (on a general scale, Nintendo comes at 12th place with Disney on the 14th place, evidently beating the console in popularity).
On a related note, it is definitely not surprising that the Nintendo Switch is such an influential brand name among young people in Japan. In a large-scale top 100 ranking of Japan’s most beloved game titles, it was revealed that the majority of the high-ranking titles among Japanese gamers in their teens are games exclusive to or playable on the Nintendo Switch.
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