Harris Survey on Best Brands

The Harris Poll latest annual survey results on 'best brands' shows Sony listed in the number one position, picked by more people than any other brand. Sony tops the list for the third year in a row, and for the fifth time in seven years. In the eight years since Harris Interactive began asking this question, Sony has never been lower than third and no other brand comes close to matching this record.

Dell moves up to second place, after having just failed to make the top ten last year, and occupying the number 5 slot in the year 2000.

Ford, which has always been one of the top four brands, slips from second to third place. Kraft, which has never made the top ten list previously, is now number four, and Coca-Cola moves up from number six to number five in the ranking.

The others which are mentioned most frequently as 'best brands' are General Electric (number 6, down from number 3 last year), Pepsi-Cola (number 7), Tide (number 8), Honda (number 9) and General Motors (number 10). General Motors was also in tenth place last year. Pepsi-Cola, Tide and Honda did not make the top ten list last year. And this is the first time that Kraft, Tide and Honda have ever made the top ten rankings.

This year, as was true last year, three of the top ten brands are automobile manufacturers (Ford, GM and Honda).

Last year, five of the top ten brands were manufacturers of electronics. This year, only two of the top ten (Sony and GE) are electronics companies, as IBM, Hewlett Packard and RCA all drop off the list, along with Microsoft. These changes may reflect the fact that much of the glamour has gone out of the electronics industry.

This year, four of the top ten brands represent consumer products: Coca-Cola, Kraft, Pepsi-Cola and Tide. Last year only Coca-Cola made it to the top ten. This change may reflect the growing appeal of the 'old economy' as opposed to dot-coms, electronics and telecom companies.

The poll underlines the very strong linkage between corporate reputation and brand image. Eight of the top ten brands (Kraft and Tide are the exceptions) are also companies. Furthermore, large majorities of all those who pick most of these top ten brands as one of the best say that 'the reputation of, and what you know about, the company that makes that product or service' is 'very important.' The two exceptions to this rule are Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola where less than half of those who pick them as among the best brands feel that what they know about the company is 'very important.'

This issue of The Harris Poll was conducted online within the United States between June 20 - 26, 2002 among a nationwide cross section of 2,050 adults. Figures for age, sex, race, education, income and region in the household were weighted where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population. 'Propensity score' weighting was also used to adjust for respondent's propensity to be online.

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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