At the turn of the millennium, Johnson & Johnson, benefiting from its heritage as the premier maker of baby powder and shampoo, enjoys the best corporate reputation among American firms according to a public-opinion study of corporate image. The research, made available exclusively to The Wall Street Journal, was conducted by Harris Interactive Inc. and the Reputation Institute, a New York research group. The nationwide survey of 10,830 people conducted online in August of 1999, is the first known effort to systematically probe a cross-section of Americans to determine the relative standing of business in the national psyche.
Among other things, the survey found that the average American pays little attention to profitability or stock performance when perceiving corporate character; and that reputations good or bad have real staying power. The rankings were determined by each company's "reputation quotient," a calculation based on how the public rated 20 attributes. Each respondent could offer an assessment of one or two of the 30 companies. In the end, each company was rated by an average of 445 people.
Here are the company's according to rank and Reputation Quotient (RQ):
| 1. | Johnson & Johnson | 83.4 | 16. | amazon.com | 77.8 |
| 2. | Coca-Cola | 81.6 | 17. | IBM | 77.6 |
| 3. | Hewlett-Packard | 81.2 | 18. | Sony | 77.4 |
| 4. | Intel | 81.0 | 19. | Yahoo! | 76.9 |
| 5. | Ben & Jerry's | 81.0 | 20. | AT&T | 75.7 |
| 6. | Wal-Mart | 80.5 | 21. | FedEx | 75.7 |
| 7. | Xerox | 79.9 | 22. | Procter & Gamble | 71.9 |
| 8. | Home Depot | 79.7 | 23. | Nike | 71.3 |
| 9. | Gateway | 78.8 | 24. | McDonald's | 71.2 |
| 10. | Disney | 78.7 | 25. | Southwest Airlines | 70.6 |
| 11. | Dell | 78.4 | 26. | America Online | 69.2 |
| 12. | General Electric | 78.1 | 27. | Daimler-Chrysler | 69.1 |
| 13. | Lucent | 78.0 | 28. | Toyota | 68.6 |
| 14. | Anheuser-Busch | 78.0 | 29. | Sears | 67.6 |
| 15. | Microsoft | 77.9 | 30. | Boeing | 67.3 |
Source: Harris Interactive Inc., and the Reputation Institute