The w-30 Companies

We often hear executives say they want to be the “Amazon” or “Apple” or “Netflix” (or insert your favorite company “here”) of their industry. Borrowing proven ideas is an excellent way to shorten time-to-value, especially when the strategies are from outside your industry. The challenge is figuring what to do and how large the gaps are between your organization and the benchmarks. With wRatings, you can skip the guesswork: Our system allows you to compare your organization’s performance to any of our benchmark companies, what we call the W-30™ companies.

The W-30 is an elite selection of companies that we continually monitor through online panels to discover how well they meet customer expectations. Subscribers have access to this proprietary data so you can build competitive strength and, ultimately, durable advantages. 

We organize the W-30 in two ways: By Sector and By Focus. Our sectors follow traditional segments, although their names are slightly more consumer-oriented (vs. shareholder-oriented). We also select companies based on their focus, which we divide into three categories: Value, Premium and Challenger.

Focus allows companies within the same industry to compete and win a large share of customers without necessarily imposing on other customer bases. This means industries typically don’t have just one market leader but three separate leaders that focus their efforts on meeting certain customer expectations uniquely.

By segmenting the W-30 into their groups by focus, you can see precisely how companies build their competitive strength.

  Value Premium Challenger
Media Google and Facebook Disney Roku and Netflix
Home Zillow
Food Domino's Starbucks Beyond Meat
Retail Amazon and Costco Lululemon
Technology Intel and Microsoft Apple
Transport Southwest UPS Tesla and Uber
Industrial Exxon Mobile and Boeing John Deer iRobot
Finance Charles Schwab American Express Square

While we are primarily focused on the 30 companies above, we are continually monitoring a few others to ensure the best coverage across industries in the rapidly changing markets of today. Currently, we are also tracking Ford, Tractor Supply Company, and Twitter.