Retailers with the best reputations are...
Amid price increases, the reputation of retailers took a dip in an annual ranking of the reputations of the “most visible” brands in the United States.
Outdoor apparel retailer Patagonia, which ranked as the most reputable company among all industries surveyed in the 2023 Axios Harris Poll 100, took the eighth spot in this year’s poll. (With a of “reputational quotient,” or RQ score, of 79.1, the activist brand remains the top-scoring brand in the retail sector.)
Tech giant Nvidia, which didn’t even make last year’s list, took the No. 1 spot with an RQ score of 81.2, followed by 3M and Fidelity Investments.
Four other retailers cracked the top 25: Costco (No. 11, with an RQ score of 78.8), Trader Joe’s (No. 13, with an RQ score of 78.6), Aldi (No.14, with an RQ score of 78.1) and Amazon.com (No.16, with an RQ score of 77.7). Notably. Aldi was the only retailer in the top 25 whose RQ score improved over lat year.
Beyond the top 25, companies such as Walmart, Macy's, McDonald's, Burger King, Amazon, Procter & Gamble, Costco, Kraft Heinz, Kohl's, Nike and Kroger all registered a decline in their RQ score from 2023 to 2024. Trust scores fell by 3.8 percentage points for clothing companies, 3.2 points for quick-service restaurants, 2.9 points for big-box stores and 2.2 points for grocers.
“Industries where consumers see price hikes for everyday items have declining trust," Harris Poll reported.
Lowest Scores
Social media platforms had some of the lowest scores, with TikTok (No. 95), Meta (No. 97) and and X (formerly Twitter) at No. 99. Similar to last year, The Trump Organization ranked last, with a QR score of 54.
Here are the top 25 companies on this year's Axios Harris Poll 100 list.
- Nvidia
- 3M
- Fidelity Investments
- Sony
- Adidas
- USAA
- Honda Motor Company
- Patagonia
- Apple
- Samsung
- Costco
- Toyota
- Trader Joe’s
- Aldi
- Suburu
- Amazon.com
- Microsoft
- Kraft Heinz Company
- IBM
- Chick-fil-A
- PepsiCo
- UPS
- General Electric
- Mattel
Methodology
The rankings are based on a survey of 16,500 Americans from a nationally representative sample conducted March 6th to 18th. The two-step process starts fresh each year by surveying the public's top-of-mind awareness of companies that either excel or falter in society.
Americans are asked which two — in their opinion — stand out as having the best reputation today and which two have the worst. All nominations are compiled into an aggregate list to determine the “most visible” companies. Subsidiaries and brands are tallied within the parent company to create a total number of nominations for each company.
A separate group of respondents rated two of those 100 most visible companies which they are familiar with on nine dimensions of reputation to calculate the company’s Reputational Quotient, or RQ, score for inclusion in the Axios Harris Poll.
Score ranges: 80 & above: Excellent | 75-79: Very Good | 70-74: Good | 65-69: Fair | 55-64: Poor | 50-54: Very Poor | Below 50: Critical