Corporate reputations in the US have diminished this year compared to 2017, according to the Reputation Institute’s “US RepTrak® 100” presentation. Only about half of consumers trust companies to do the right thing, down from 62% last year, and just 41% give companies the benefit of the doubt, down from 56% last year.
Brand reputations – in the aggregate – suffered the biggest decline among 25-44-year-olds, dropping from an overall score of 83.2 last year to just 75.6 this year.
Men of that age were the most affected, with their aggregate reputation score for companies falling from 81.2 to 76.
The declines in reputation scores were larger among men than women of this age group across all dimensions of corporate reputation, but were most strongly felt in the Citizenship dimension, which measures what companies are doing for communities and society at large.
The Reputation Institute attributes these declines to a growing belief that companies focus on profits over people. Placing customers ahead of profits has been shown to be one of the building blocks of trust, and indeed one study from MarketingSherpa found that the most broadly cited experience among dissatisfied customers was the company not putting their needs and wants above its own business goals. Read the rest at MarketingCharts.com.
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