Today, Amazon beats Apple in a way that doesn’t specifically pertain to tablets, ebooks, digital music, streaming content, or any other area in which the two routinely do battle. Today’s victory is all about the consumers and their views on the companies as a whole.
We’re talking Harris Interactive’s annual Harris Poll RQ, which measures the perceived reputations of the sixty most-visible companies in the United States.
And this year, it’s Amazon that takes top honors.
Last year’s winner, Apple, falls to second place in the 2013 poll.
Google also had a strong placement, coming in 4th. Rounding out the top 5 were The Walt Disney Company and Johnson & Johnson.
The RQ looks at 6 different dimensions to corporate reputation. Amazon ranked in the top five in five of the six dimensions.
“Amazon had a five point advantage over any other company in the study in the dimension of Emotional Appeal, despite an entirely virtual relationship with the public. Amazon also achieved the top rating in the dimension of Products & Services,” says Harris.
“Our results show that Amazon has managed to build an intimate relationship with the public without being perceived as intrusive,” said Harris Interactive VP of Reputation Management Robert Fronk. “And as the company that is so widely known for its personal recommendations, more than nine in ten members of the public would recommend Amazon to friends and family.”
Here are the winners in each of the six different categories. You can see that five are tech companies.
Unsurprisingly, AIG and Goldman Sachs logged the two worst RQ scores.
[All Images via Harris Interactive]