ESG Priorities for Multinational Corporations

In today’s environment, understanding consumer perceptions of your Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’ – it’s a business imperative. Multinational corporations have the ability and the responsibility to ‘do good’ in the world. But E, S and G are not held in equal importance by consumers and citizens across the world.

In order to gain a better understanding of the issues that matter most to people, Ipsos conducted the fourth ESG-focused wave of the Ipsos Global Reputation Monitor.

We sought to level-set the understanding of E, S, and G and how those priorities stack up against one another. We defined each of E, S, and G in consumer language and then asked citizens/consumers from across 24 countries to rank E, S, and G in terms of importance for multinational companies.

In our latest research, we not only seek to understand how ESG priorities vary by industry but have added a layer to understand how some of the world’s largest companies perform against these priorities. These ratings were then used to determine a company rating on ESG.

In this paper, we share an industry-by-industry summary of the global findings. We share a bird’s eye view of the most pertinent issues for each industry, as well as an overview of the extent of differentiation in effectiveness for the main companies in the industry.

Key findings

• Society remains the most important ESG pillar on average globally, followed by Environment and then Governance. But this varies by country, with Environment more important in Mexico and Colombia and Governance more important in Hungary and Peru.
• Citizen-consumers are much more likely to select priorities that they can see, feel, and touch. Jobs and economic contribution, environmental impact and affordability consistently rank highly.
• The mix of E, S and G priorities differs by industry. Environmental issues come top for the automotive and resources sectors; governance issues come top for financial services and technology.
• Company ESG performance within industries is variable. In some industries e.g. CPG, pharmaceuticals, there is a clear divide between companies perceived to be doing well and those doing badly. In contrast, within the resources industry, there is little differentiation between companies.

Find out more about how to navigate the evolving ESG landscape in the 2025 Ipsos ESG Council Report.