Apple Gets Good Marks in Recent Studies

Apple took the tenth place spot in the annual Harris study of top brands according to Americans. This is the computer and digital music company’s first year on the survey, so don’t fret that it made the Top Ten. For the seventh year in a row, Sony is still the country’s number one brand. According to the survey DELL remained the No. 2 brand, and Coca-Cola moved up from last year to claim the third place spot.

2,351 U.S. adults between June 7 and 13 were asked to name the three brands they considered the best—without being provided a list of names, according to MarketWatch.

Half of the top 10 brands are for electronics products, the release pointed out, while three are for automobile and two for consumer and packaged goods.
The top 10 brands, according to the Harris survey:

1. Sony
2. Dell
3. Coca-Cola
4. Toyota
5. Ford
6. Honda
7. Hewlett Packard
8. General Electric
9. Kraft Foods
10. Apple

Chevrolet, Panasonic, Pepsi Cola, Nike and Maytag didn’t make the top 10, but still received a substantial number of mentions, according to the release.
Kraft Foods fell from its No. 3 spot last year to No. 9 this year, while Toyota moved its No. 4 rank from No. 10 last year—those were the two biggest movers in the survey.

Meanwhile, Apple’s rise to the tenth position booted out Microsoft. This is great news out there for Apple enthusiasts because the tenth-place position was what Microsoft shared with Hewlett-Packard last year. Consumers ranked HP’s brand seventh out of all surveyed.

E Week Channel Insider was surprised Sony maintained its brand image in the wake of several scandals that cast the company in a negative light, especially Sony BMG Music Entertainment’s use of digital-rights-management software in November 2005, an action that prompted a consumer suit, Amazon.com refunds for Sony DRM-enabled CDs, and several antivirus companies to target the Sony DRM as malware, dubbing it a rootkit.

“Despite the bad press, Sony remained Harris Poll’s top brand. According to the NPD Group, which tracks retail sales in the U.S., the copy protection scandal put a dent in Sony’s reputation, but not enough for consumers to forget Sony’s history of quality products. ‘Those issues were only recognized by a small segment of the population,’ said Ross Rubin, director of technology industry analysis for NPD. ‘Even with the scandal Sony’s quality innovations still resonated with most consumers who can’t spell DRM.’”

Rubin said that Apple’s expanding stores and the continued success of the iPod led to a great growth in brand recognition.

“Microsoft did not make the top ten this year mainly due to a decrease in marketing and brand visibility,”  Rubin said.

Another reason Apple is making the grade is its continued partnerships with well-known American brands such as Nike. The new Nike + iPod kit was shipped yesterday: I can just see the Los Angelites buying about ten thousand of these. According to a CNBC report, over 30 million Americans have taken up running as a sport and the new system permits users to compare their current statistics to past records and the records of their friends. Never fear, you are no longer chained to the treadmill to know how many miles you ran and calories you sweated off. The fact Apple and Nike are relying on the buzz about this product to generate sales really speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

And to continue with the good polling news, Satmetrix Systems just released a study confirming Apple as the computer company with the most loyal customers. Google was rated best for online services and Symantec was rated best for computer software. The Net Promoter score, used to rate the companies, was created by loyalty expert Fred Reichheld and measures customer experience and profitable growth, using a simple and radical question: How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague? The study was fielded during the first half of 2005.