Make no mistake, a company’s reputation affects its bottom line.
According to research by one global marketing firm, there are at least two dozen factors that make a major contribution to a company’s reputation, ranging from the quality of its products and services, innovation and customer service to its ethics, philanthropy and environmental stewardship.
A company’s reputation can take a swan dive in a minute, whether from a data breach, a flub on social media, or even a price hike. In the Cambridge-Analytica scandal, Facebook (FB Get Facebook, Inc. Class A Report allowed a third party to collect personal data belonging to millions of users without their consent, to be used predominantly for political advertising. After Facebook admitted the privacy lapse in 2018, the company’s reputation ranking in the Axios-Harris Poll 100 plummeted from the middle of the list of 100 companies to the bottom 10.
The Axios-Harris Poll 100 measures and ranks the reputations of companies based on what Americans are thinking about the brands that are floating around in our cultural conversation.
For the 2021 survey, respondents were asked which two companies – in their opinion – stand out as having the best reputation and which two have the worst reputation in America today. The nominations are compiled into an aggregate list to determine the 100 “most visible” companies.
In the ratings phase of the survey, a second set of 42,935 respondents were asked to rate the 100 most visible companies on several dimensions of reputation to calculate the company’s “reputation quotient.” They include:
- Trust—Company I trust
- Culture—Good company to work for
- Vision—Clear vision for the future
- Ethics—Maintains high ethical standards
- Growth—Strong prospects for growth
- Citizenship—Shares my values, supports good causes
- Products & services—Develops innovative products and services, offers high quality products and services
Subsidiaries and brands are tallied within the parent company to create the total number of nominations for each company.
Patagonia ranked first place on this year’s list, with high marks for ethics, citizenship and culture, moving up 31 spots in the rankings from 2020, one of the biggest improvements. Other companies that improved the most were Pfizer (PFE Get Pfizer Inc. Report, which moved up 54 spots to No. 7, and Dollar General (DG Get Dollar General Corporation Report, which moved up 19 spots out of the bottom rankings to No. 71.
Companies with the biggest declines in score compared with last year were Fox (FOX Get Fox Corporation Class B Report, TikTok, Google (GOOGL Get Alphabet Inc. Class A Report, Adidas (ADDYY) and Delta Air Lines (DAL Get Delta Air Lines, Inc. Report.
Newcomers to the “most visible” list this year are Moderna (MRNA Get Moderna, Inc. Report, SpaceX, Chewy (CHWY Get Chewy, Inc. Class A Report, REI and Subaru (FUJHY Get Subaru Corporation Report.
The companies with the worst reputation are the Trump Organization (No. 100), followed by Fox, Facebook, Wish.com (WISH Get ContextLogic Inc. Report, Sears (SHLDQ) , Wells Fargo (WFC Get Wells Fargo & Company Report, TikTok and Twitter (TWTR Get Twitter, Inc. Report.
These are the companies with the best reputations:
