Gen Z on Good Businesses

Rhodes Pinto

06-23-2026

Understanding Gen Z preferences has become a hot topic in the business world. What kind of companies do they like; what kind do they avoid? What is effective in attracting Gen Z, both as consumers and as talent?

For the past several years, I have had my first-year students in Cornerstone for Business SCLA 101 write a research paper that affords direct insight into these questions. For the research paper, I ask students to choose a company that they consider “good” — with the meaning of “good” left entirely open to the students — and to argue for why it is a good company, what could make the company better, and what could cause the company to fail.

From nearly 500 papers, three clear preference trends on a “good” company emerged, often bundled together by students:

1. Frontrunners. The old saying that “people love an underdog” does not hold here. My business students, perhaps not surprisingly, tend to choose market leaders with strong financials and significant (consumer-facing) visibility. Yet my students regard being a frontrunner to be not only a matter of profit but also a matter of the goods or services produced, the quality of jobs they offer to their employees, and the extent of their contribution to society through the creation of those jobs and through other measures like charitable programs.
2. Innovation and quality. Students consider to be “good” those companies that have delivered innovation, particularly at the scale Schumpeter has in mind by “creative destruction.” Hence, common choices made include Apple (second most popular choice), Tesla, and Amazon. Further, particularly in competitive industries, students name companies with a reputation for the highest standards of quality in their products.
3. Identity. Students strongly gravitate toward those companies with a clear corporate identity. In other words, they choose companies with a strong and straightforward vision of who they are and what they stand for. Hence, common choices made include Patagonia (the most popular choice), Ben & Jerry’s, and Costco. One aspect regarding identity appears particularly important, namely that this identity informs all aspects of the company’s operations: products, marketing, worker treatment, supply chain, charitable programs, etc. in order to relay this identity and reinforce branding around it.

Here, then, is the main takeaway for companies courting Gen Z: have a clear corporate identity that permeates all operations, one which is conducive to innovation and quality in the marketplace and to excellence in outreach to society.

Interested in hearing more? You can read three student papers on good businesses in the premiere issue of The Exchange: Art, Business, and Literature. This student journal collects outstanding work from students taking Cornerstone for Business, and in the issue you can find artwork, poetry, short fiction, music, PowerPoint presentations, essays — even what Plato and Adam Smith would think of purchasing an artwork of a banana duct-taped to a wall for $6.2M.