Auto Industry Reputation Shows Big Gains as Airlines, oh, Crash

Good news for autoworkers – people hate the airlines. See the U.S.A in a …

The latest Harris Poll that measures how the public perceives twenty-two of the nation’s largest industries shows huge shifts during the last two years. The biggest changes since 2009, when the survey was last conducted, are a huge improvement in the auto industry reputation as measured by the number of people who think that the auto industry is doing a good job of serving consumers, while there is also a “very large increase” in those who think the airline industry is doing a bad job.

The key measure between those who think the industry is doing a good and a bad job of serving their consumers, shows a 36 point improvement, from plus 6 to plus 42 for the automobile industry reputation and a 27 point decline, from plus 34 to plus 7 for airlines.

Industries with the best images among the public are supermarkets (plus 80), online search engines (plus 74), hospitals (plus 66), computer hardware companies (plus 61) and computer software companies (plus 55).

The least popular industries are oil companies (minus 31), tobacco companies (minus 21), managed care companies (minus 13), health insurance companies (minus 9) and investment and brokerage firms (plus 3).

In a release Harris said that because The Harris Poll has been asking questions almost every year since 1997 it is possible to look not just at short term trends but also at changes over 14 years, although some of the industries were not included in the earliest surveys.

The biggest changes (all of them declines in the images of the industries involved) over this time are:

• A 55 point drop, from plus 24 to minus 31, for oil companies;
• A 43 point drop, from plus 60 to plus 17, for pharmaceutical companies;
• A 37 point drop, from plus 61 to plus 24, for telephone companies;
• A 31 point drop, from plus 52 to plus 21, for banks;
• A 26 point drop, from plus 13 to minus 13, for managed care companies; and,
• A 22 point drop, from plus 13 to minus 9, for health insurance companies.

Harris makes an interesting but the interesting observation that politicians may conclude that it is not a good thing to be seen as supporters of very unpopular industries, and that there may be votes to be won by Democrats if they can label their Republican opponents as being too close to “big oil” or the health insurance industry.

The flaw in this reasoning is that big money owns the political process, and that the support of big money causes goes on behind closed doors.

Right now, virtually all Americans (94%) have a negative view of the overall job Congress is doing and just 6% give them positive ratings. This low rating transcends party lines as only 7% of both Democrats and Republicans and 5% of Independents give Congress positive marks, according to Harris.