The 10 Best Companies by Reputation in 2016

Reputation, or the overall quality or character as seen or judged by people in general, is something a company has to work hard on for years, but it can be easy destroyed in days, as the example of Volkswagen’s emission scandal recently demonstrated.

Each year, the private ‘Reputation Institute’ (founded 1997) publishes a ranking of the most reputable companies worldwide according to the public’s perception of their performance in 7 sectors:

• products and services
• innovation
• workplace
• governance
• citizenship
• leadership
• performance

To compile the rankings, the Reputation Institute collected more than 240’000 ratings from 15 countries.

Here are the 10 companies worldwide with the highest reputation in 2016:

10. Apple. The iphone-maker has lost in reputation and dropped from the 7thspot in 2014 and the 8th place in 2015 to number 10 this year.

9. Sony. The japanese company turns 70 this year and is active in 4 segments (electronics incl. video games, network services and medical business), motion pictures, music and financial services.

8. Canon. The world’s biggest maker of cameras and printers was founded 1937 and is still going strong. Canon is based in Tokyo and just bought Toshiba’s medical and consumer-electronics units for about 6 billion USD.

7. Microsoft. After dropping from the list of the most reputable companies in 2015, Microsoft has returned. The comeback is based on the company’s better reputation in Asia and thanks to the detachable tablet market, in which Microsoft overtook Apple.

6. Lego. The danish toy-maker is the most reputable brand in Europe and behind Disney the also the second most powerful brand worldwide.

5. Daimler. The producer of Mercedes dropped from 3 to 5 this year. But this could change again, since Mercedes could become the car brand behind Uber, as the taxi-app-company just announced an order over 10 billion USD for 100’000 autonomous Mercedes S-Class cars and if the mystery is solved, why Uber choose Mercedes, whose autonomous cars have only limited capability at present, instead of Tesla, whose self-driving cars are already on the road.

4. BMW. The next german car-producer who fell behind. From number 1 in 2015, the Munich-based manufacturer – who is also in charge of Rolls Royce and just celebrated his 100 anniversary – is now outside the top 3 on 4th position.

3. Google. The company who actually is called ‘Alphabet’ got the best reputation in the sectors ‘performance’ and ‘workplace’ but overall only made it to spot number 3 and slipped from the 2nd place Google had held in 2014 and 2015.

2. Disney. The media- and entertainment giant from California made the top 10 in each of the 7 sectors mentioned above. The next big date for Disney is June 16with the (already sold out) opening of the highly anticipated Disney-resort in Shanghai, built for over 5 billion USD.

1. Rolex. The swiss watchmaker is the world’s most reputable company. After the 4thspot in 2014 and 2015, Rolex is this year’s number 1 thanks to the company’s incredibly high reputation for products and services and its willingness to stand behind its product.

Reputation: The top 10 companies over the last 3 years