Apple (AAPL), burnished by the iPhone’s success and memorials to Steve Jobs, displaced Google (GOOG) as the top company in Harris Interactive’s poll of corporate images. Berkshire Hathaway and Johnson & Johnson dropped.
Apple earned the highest score in the 13-year history of Harris’ survey of U.S. consumers, buoyed by the Cupertino company’s financial success and products like last year’s iPhone 4S, said Robert Fronk, the pollster’s executive vice president. The rise came even as corporate America’s reputation sank, hurt by sagging views of the financial industry, Harris said Monday in a statement.
“After a little positive momentum last year, across the board, we saw the tarnish come back,” Fronk said. “Whether it’s due to Occupy Wall Street or the bad news in general, the negatives of the banking and financial services industries are spreading.”
J&J, the world’s second-biggest seller of health-care products, fell to seventh after three years of product recalls, the first time the reputation of the New Brunswick, N.J.-based company has ranked below the top two in Harris’ annual poll. Berkshire, based in Omaha, Neb., plunged from fourth place to 24th after an executive resigned in March and was accused by Chairman Warren Buffett of violating the firm’s insider trading rules.
Only eight companies were rated as “excellent” in Harris’ poll of 17,000 people, half the number in 2011.
Google, the Mountain View-based owner of the world’s most popular search engine, slipped to second place from first last year. Rounding out the top five were Coca-Cola, based in Atlanta, followed by Amazon.com of Seattle and Kraft Foods, based in Northfield, Ill.
Apple topped the public’s ratings for vision and leadership, products and services, financial performance and workplace environment, four of the six categories that Harris tracked.
Along with the glow of products like the iPhone and iPad, Apple benefited from the praise aimed at cofounder Jobs, said Fronk. The former chief executive officer, who rescued Apple from the brink of bankruptcy when he returned to the company in 1997, died on Oct. 5. The poll’s online surveys were conducted from Dec. 2 to Dec. 19.
“The outpouring around him as a visionary leader probably played a strong role in where they ended up,” Fronk said.
