The Best Corporate Reputations? You Decide

The Reputation Institute, a private consultancy dedicated to corporate reputation management, has just published its 2008 Global Pulse Report which attempts to measure corporate reputations. A synopsis of the U.S. study is available for download at the Institutes's website and it makes for interesting reading by anyone in the business of advising clients about reputation issues. (The complete report is available for a hefty fee.)
The global report looks at 600 companies; the U.S. portion ranks 150 companies. The rankings are a result of over 60,000 online consumer interviews across 27 countries.
Of the 150 U.S. companies measured, are you surprised that Google ranked #1? With the mantra of "do no evil", it appears consumers believe that Google continues to act positively on their behalf.
Keep in mind, this is a measure of broad consumer perception, not necessarily the perception of those reading the business pages day-in and day-out.
The report notes that a high score indicates that consumers have a "high level of trust, respect, and good feelings for the company".
Of the top 10 companies, most are well known consumer brand companies: Johnson & Johnson at #2, Kraft Foods at #3, etc.
But, oddly enough, of the tech companies, fading brands such as Xerox (#8), Texas Instruments (#10) and Kodak (#11) handily beat out such brands such as Apple (#17) and Microsoft which comes in at a disappointing #43.
The report also points out that there is a very high correlation between levels of recommendation and what the authors call "support" or recommendation. In other words, the better the reputation ranking, the more likely consumers are to recommend the company.
What this report also says to me is that consumers have a long memory and, perhaps especially with consumer technology, even "old" names still carry cachet.
It's hard to believe that Xerox, Kodak and TI are beating Apple.
We know there is a changing of the guard in tech brands but the word hasn't got out to the general consumer quite yet.