As we can see, the diversity of companies included in the top five of each ranking is remarkable (if we go to 10, 25 or 50 positions, the differences are still considerable with regard to the companies included, as well as their positions). In fact, only Apple and Google appear in all of the indexes practically year after year, although in some of them they are in very diverse positions with regard to the rest –see Global Reptract. On the other hand, there are also significant differences even within the same index, as for example in the case of Apple not appearing in 2013 in the Global Reptrack Pulse index, yet having been included years before and years after; or Berkshire Hathaway in the World’s Most Respected Companies index, which after being the 3rd most reputable company in 2011 disappears from the top ten the following year, and only a few months later re-enters the index in 1st place in the following edition; or the case of Sony, which only appears in one index for several years despite its strong position in that same index.

It should be pointed out that we have only taken into account the first 5 positions because we believe the variations must necessarily be smaller among those who lead the markets, since the leadership position is not easily “earned”. Moreover, since it is necessary to implement a strategy over time to reach leading positions in a certain sector and in the market in general, we believe the positions are more stable in these top positions of the rankings. In spite of this, even though one might consider this to be a simplistic analysis, in any case it clearly reflects the lack of criteria in the measurement of reputation, and it questions the reliability of the systems that calculate such reputation. For us, this undoubtedly reaffirms the necessity to delve more deeply into the evaluation formulas of each index in order to analyse the reasons why their results are so disparate.

In the above comparison, we have not included the reference index of Spanish companies since local companies cannot be compared with those of a global nature. Here we refer to MERCO (Corporate Reputation Business Ranking), in its COMPANY version, which we have mentioned as a tool of reference in measuring the corporate reputation of companies operating in Spain.

Once again, we include a comparative table (Table 2) where results of the MERCO COMPANY index can be seen for the last 9 years (2011-2019), and we have observed that the variations are smaller than in the international rankings. In spite of this, some companies have reached diverse positions in certain years –El Corte Inglés and BBVA– although these are irrelevant when analysing their comparative position within their sectors.