Samsung Leads CE Tech Companies in Harris Poll Reputation Study
Amazon, with a score of 83.72, and Samsung, at 81.98, finished behind first-place Wegmans Food Markets in the 2015 Harris Poll Reputation Quotient study released last week. Consumers rated companies on key "reputational dimensions" of products and services, emotional appeal, financial performance and vision and leadership, Harris said Wednesday. The reputations of the 100 most visible companies range from excellent (scores of 80+) to poor (scores of 50 to 64).
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Samsung has “steadily climbed up the ranks” in recent years, said Harris spokeswoman Carol Gstalder, while Apple (80.69), at ninth, has fallen five spots since 2012. Among consumer tech companies, Google came in at 10 (80.44), Sony at 13 (79.93), Microsoft at 15 (79.94), Intel at 20, LG at 23 (78.20), HP at 42 (75.26), Best Buy at 59 (72.28) and Dell at 60 (72.13).
Verizon led wireless service providers in 66th place with a “fair” rating of 69.74, followed by Sprint at 72 (67.66), T-Mobile at 75 (67.54), and AT&T at 76 (67.26). Multisystem operators hovered in the fair to poor range on the list. DirecTV posted at 83 (65.27), Time Warner at 85 (64.93), Charter at 92 (60.30) and Comcast at 93 (60.64). Dish Network came in 98th out of 100, with a rating of 58.07, according to rankings. Goldman sacks bottomed out the list.
“Reputation is far from static and is a business asset that is earned every day as people evaluate companies through the lens of what matters most to them,” Gstalder said. Harris expanded this year’s list to 100 from 60 “to offer deeper insight by industry,” she said, which allowed three companies to jump onto the list for the first time: No. 1 Wegmans, No. 7 L.L. Bean and No. 8 Publix Supermarkets. “Expanding the study allows companies to see how they stack up" within their industry and with other industries, she said.
For the first time, Harris Poll also had each company rated by 100 Opinion Elites, a sub-segment of the main survey with respondents who are “more informed, engaged, and likely to act based on corporate conduct and other reputation factors,” said Harris. Companies want to engage that type of consumer because “they tend to influence the general public’s opinion,” said Gstalder. In the Opinion Elites rankings, Amazon came in second, Samsung at 6 and Apple at 7, it said.
Gstalder said that more than half of the respondents actively seek information about companies they hear about or do business with, and 36 percent said they had decided against doing business with a company “because of something they learned about its conduct.” Companies need to evaluate and understand the increasing expectations consumers have when it comes to corporate reputation, "specifically what they think, say and do, as well as how best to engage with them,” she said.
The Harris study was done online, in English, among 27,278 U.S. respondents Oct. 20 to Dec. 18, with preliminary nominating research done with 4,034 respondents, Aug. 26-28 and Sept. 24-26. The Annual RQ study begins with a nomination phase, used to identify the companies with the most “visible” reputations. All respondents are asked, unaided, to name companies that stand out as having the best and worst reputations. Online nominations are summed to create a total number of nominations for each company. The final list of the 100 most visible companies in the U.S. is measured in the RQ ratings phase, during which respondents are randomly assigned to rate two of the companies with which they are “very” or “somewhat” familiar. After the first company rating is completed, the respondent is given the option to rate the second company. Companies are rated on their reputation on 20 different attributes: emotional appeal, financial performance, products & services, social responsibility, vision and leadership, and workplace environment.