Shell tops table in survey of corporate reputation values
Corporate reputation is worth a total of £480bn a year to the UK’s 350 biggest companies, according to a study by Echo Research and Bestra Brand Consultants.
The economic contribution of the corporate reputations of FTSE 350 companies account for 30% of all shareholder value, a rise of three percentage points over the past 12 months.
Echo and Bestra use a range of factors to value the reputation of all FTSE 350 companies, including quality of management, quality of marketing and environmental responsibility.
The study found that Royal Dutch Shell’s corporate brand reputation contributes the most to the total value of the company’s market capitalisation with 52.1% despite many predicting that rival BP’s Gulf of Mexico disaster would hit the oil sector’s reputation hard. Unilever is second on 52%.
The reputations of the top 10 companies contribute an average of 48% to shareholder value, it adds.
Simon Cole, managing partner of Bestra UK, says corporate reputation is becoming increasingly important because sales, and therefore a company’s market value, could be affected by the actions of the companies behind the brands, which consumers are more aware of than ever before.
Reputational value was measured using an empirical model that analysed hard data from a variety of sources.
Separately, a poll of 10,000 consumers has found that Rolls-Royce is the most reputable company in the UK, despite the explosion of one of its engines on a Qantas flight last year.
Retail brands performed well in the Reputation Institute’s UK Pulse Report, which ranked companies by factors including trust and admiration, with last year’s winner Alliance Boots, Mothercare, Next, John Lewis, Marks & Spencer and Matalan all featuring in the top 10.
