The faith-based group Faith Equality Index has listed the top seven brands that Christians identify with the most after conducting a study on the subject.
The top seven Christian brands are Chick-fil-A, Hobby Lobby, Interstate Batteries, Tyson Foods, Cracker Barrel, Walmart, and Thrivent Financial.
These companies and over 300 others were scored up to a hundred based on their faith compatibility with consumers. The highest score received was still relatively low, and the FEI noted that these brands have more to improve upon.
Chick-fil-A got a score of 63, followed by Hobby Lobby with 62, Interstate Batteries with 61, Tyson Foods with 60, Cracker Barrel with 53, Walmart with 51, and Thrivent Financial with 50.
On the flip side, the companies with the lowest faith compatibility ratings are Unilever and Bank of America, both of which scored only 11, DireTV got 14, Expedia got 15, Nationwide and Pfizer both got 16, Microsoft and AT&T both with 17, and finally Apple and T-Mobile with 19.
Brand strategist Chris Stone, who founded the Faith Driven Consumer group, is hoping that the FEI will guide Christians to invest wisely on companies that share their faith and values. Stone said Christians are a huge market to attract, since there are over 41 million Christian consumers worldwide who spend $2 trillion annually.
"Faith driven consumers want America's brands to include them at parity with their other prioritised communities," Stone told The Blaze.
"The FEI provides a transparent baseline for both brands and consumers to measure the relative degree which brands choose to engage faith driven consumers and allow (them) to steward their spending by preferring companies that welcome, embrace and celebrate them."
And while faith-based brands carry low ratings as of now, Stone suspects that this is because the companies lack effort in courting the faith community.
"Some companies have a culture that is naturally compatible with faith driven consumers; however, few if any of the companies in the survey are overtly engaging faith driven consumers with any level of parity to their other communities," he said. "They have not prioritised faith driven consumers. The scores from the other rating validate that clearly."
To improve their current standing, Stone notes that they have to "look at their engagement gaps and proactively fill them."
"Their Faith Equality Index score effectively measures the quality of and the priority they place on their engagement with faith driven consumers," he said.
