With a stock price over $500 and a market capitalization that CNN Money recently reported is worth more than the countries Greece, Austria, Argentina, and South Africa, the Cupertino, California technology juggernaut is now officially the Apple of most everyone’s eye — except for maybe Google. Apple achieved the highest score ever in the 2012 Harris Interactive annual Reputation Quotient (RQ) survey of more than 17,000 American consumers, pushing Google off the top spot in this year’s survey (Google is now #2).
Respondents are first asked to identify the 60 most visible companies and then surveyed to rate these companies based on their reputation on 20 different attributes that comprise the RQ. The attributes are then grouped into six different reputation dimensions: Emotional Appeal, Products & Services, Social Responsibility, Vision & Leadership, Workplace Environment, and Financial Performance. An executive summary of the study is available here.
Coca-Cola, Amazon.com and Kraft round out the top five. Reputation management efforts at Toyota, General Motors and BP are paying off — each saw significant increases in their corporate reputation this year. Wall Street, however, is going in the other direction. Financial services firms like Bank of America are facing a crisis of public perception on issues like trust, ethics and customer service.
