Corporate Image 2001: It's All About Customer Service
Ipsos-Reid completed a survey on corporate image last weekend. The polling firm interviewed a representative sample of 1,000 adults nationwide between Friday, July 20 and Sunday, July 22. The margin of error is +/- 3.1%.
The survey focused on what matters most to Americans when they assess the image of a corporation.
"People care first about how they are treated, as customers. In addition, many Americans also care about the larger questions of corporate ethics--how are others treated, including employees and competitors? What should cause the most concern among corporate officials in America is the relatively low importance Americans today place on the two key tools corporations traditionally use to improve a corporation's image, namely, investor relations and charitable giving. Those traditional corporate public relations efforts will do little to overcome bad treatment of customers," Riehle reports.
Business enjoys a relatively favorable image in general today. By a 3-to-1 margin, Americans are more likely to report positive (74%) rather than negative (24%) feelings toward business in general.
The most positive in their assessment of business are the best educated (82% have positive feelings), non-whites (83%) and 18-to-34 year olds (79%). (Click here for the detailed tables.)
Other Key Findings from the Survey
What matters most to people in how they rate their feelings toward corporations?
Most important are issues related to how people are treated as customers--do corporations treat customers well, and are the products and services of high quality? Younger people, higher-income Americans, and also non-whites are especially likely to assess a corporation on those grounds, as customers.
Next most important are issues related to broader ethical questions--are companies practicing good ethics in relations with competitors, customers and employees, and do they treat their employees well? Are their prices fair? These are the kinds of issues that divide men and women--women say they care about these issues when they assess a corporation's overall image, while men are more likely to say they do not care about larger ethical issues.
Whether a corporation is paying its fair share of taxes proves to be of relatively less importance in the way people assess a corporation and their image of it. Younger people, better educated people, and men in particular say they don't care, while people who are employed only part-time or not currently employed would be troubled if they heard a corporation was skipping out on its fair share of taxes.
In the New Economy, innovation might be king, but not in the image of corporations--at least not yet. Fewer than one-in-three rate innovation as among the most important factors in assessing a corporation. Least impressed are those in the bastion of the Old Economy, the Northeast.
Two of the key tools of corporate public relations prove relatively unimportant in how people assess corporations. Neither the standard corporate public relations tool of corporate contributions to charity, nor what corporate investor relations department say about the company's stock price, will have much of an impact. Young people, the best educated, the highest income, and Americans in the West are least likely to be impressed by these standard tools of corporate image development.
For more information on this press release, please contact: Thomas Riehle 202-463-7300 email:[email protected]
