Public Ranks the Reputations of Industries
Aug 25th, 2008 • Posted in: Research ReportPoll finds that “supermarkets score best; tobacco and oil at the bottom”
From Harris Interactive:
“Every year at this time, The Harris Poll® measures public attitudes about 20 different industries. Specifically, we ask whether each industry is generally doing a good or a bad job of serving consumers. This year’s survey finds many big changes, up and down, since last year….
“Industries with the Best Reputations
“Supermarkets continue to get better scores than any other industry; fully 90 percent of all adults think they do a good job and only six percent think they do a poor job, giving them a net positive score of 84. Next in the list of industries with the best reputations are online search engines (65), computer hardware companies (64), computer software companies (59), hospitals (53), and Internet service providers (52).
“Industries with Worst Reputations
“Tobacco companies (-43) and oil companies (-32) come at the bottom of the list, far below the other 19 industries. The two other industries with negative scores are managed care companies (-14) and health insurance (-9), which are now more or less synonymous….
“Industries that Have Lost Ground since Last Year
“Six industries have seen their scores get worse this year. Investment and brokerage firms have lost the most ground (-21). Also banks lost ten points. These changes reflect the problems triggered by the sub-prime mortgage crisis….
“Changes since 1997
“Three industries have seen truly massive declines in their reputations since Harris first asked these questions eleven years ago in 1997:
- “Oil companies have fallen 56 points from 24 point positive to 32 negative;
- “Airlines have fallen 48 points from 66 positive to 18 positive since 1998 (they were not included in the 1997 survey);
- “Pharmaceutical companies have fallen 45 points from 60 positive to 15 positive this year.
“Three other industries have suffered declines of more than 20 points since 1997: managed care (down 27 points), telephone companies (down 24 points since 1997), and health insurance (down 22 points)….”
For the full press release from Harris, Aug. 7, click here.
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