Apple and Alphabet’s Google corporate brands dropped in the annual Harris Poll Reputation Quotient poll while Amazon maintained the top spot for the third consecutive year, as noted by Reuters. The former plummeted from fifth place to 29th position, while the latter fell from eighth place to 28th position.
John Gerzema, CEO of the Harris Poll, told Reuters that the likely reason Apple and Google fell was that they have not introduced as many attention-grabbing products as they did in past years.
The Annual RQ study begins with a Nomination Phase which is used to identify the companies with the most “visible” reputations according to the General Public. All respondents are asked to name companies that stand out as having the best and worst reputations overall. Two open-end questions are used:
Of all the companies that you’re familiar with or that you might have heard about, which TWO – in your opinion – stand out as having the BEST reputations overall?
Of all the companies that you’re familiar with or that you might have heard about, which TWO – in your opinion – stand out as having the WORST reputations overall?
Nominations from all interviews are tallied with subsidiaries and brand names collapsed within the parent company. 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 Section.
This year’s nomination interviews took place online between Dec. 11, 2017, to Jan. 12, 2018, among 25,800 U.S. adults to identify the top 100 “most visible” companies.
