Apple is the fifth most reputable company in the U.S., according to the 2017 Reputation Quotient Ratings from Harris Poll, a list of the ”100 most visible companies” in the U.S. Ahead of Apple are Amazon, Wegmans, Publix Super Markets, and Johnson. Trailing Apple in the top 10 are UPS, Walt Disney Company, Google, Tesla Motors, and 3M.
Apple’s score of 82.07 on the RQ scale is said to be excellent, and is just 4.2 points behind Amazon’s top place. However, the score is down from the 83.03 Apple tallied last year, when placed Apple in second behind Amazon’s 83.96 for that year’s poll.
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 September 13-15 and October 4-6, 2016 among 4,092 U.S. adults to identify the top 100 “most visible” companies.