Reputation Institute is a research and insights company that analyzes the reputation of corporations and places, based on studies of consumer perceptions and media coverage. It was started by two business school academics, Charles Fombrun and Cees van Riel, in 1999 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
History
In 1996, Charles Fombrun, a professor at New York University Stern School of Business, published the book Reputation: Realizing Value From the Corporate Image. With Cees van Riel, a professor at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Fombrun, in 1997, also began publishing Corporate Reputation Review, an academic journal now published by Palgrave Macmillan. Fombrun and a doctoral student Violina Rindova then organized a conference on corporate reputation at New York University, which was later hosted in subsequent years by other academics and universities. In 1999, Fombrun and van Riel founded Reputation Institute which took over the organizational responsibility of the annual corporate reputation conference. The conference served to centralize all research endeavors on corporate reputation. In 2013, a New-York-based private equity firm, Catalyst Investors, purchased a minority stake in Reputation Institute. In February 2018, Reputation Institute purchased U.K. based media analytics company Mettle Consulting. Kylie Wright-Ford was appointed CEO of Reputation Institute in June 2018. In May 2019, Reputation Institute bought Cormex Research, a Canadian media analytics company.
In collaboration with Harris Interactive, Reputation Institute developed Reputation Quotient in 1999. The RQ model uses 20 questions analyzed to gather data from members of the public and evaluate the reputations of corporations and organizations. The model evaluated organizations in six dimensions: "emotional appeal," "products and services," "financial performance," "vision and leadership," "workplace environment," and "social and environmental responsibility." In 2005, Reputation Institute developed the RepTrak model to replace RQ. As of 2016, RepTrak studies are conducted annually in 25 industries across 40 countries. RepTrak analyzes public opinions across numerous countries and analyzes corporate reputation using measures in seven dimensions: "products and services," "innovation," "workplace," "governance," "citizenship," "leadership," and "performance." Reputation Institute also publishes Country RepTrak which ranks the reputations of nations using three criteria: "appealing environment," "advanced economy," and "effective government." In the 2015 Country RepTrak, Canada ranked 1st, United States ranked 22nd, and Mexico ranked 37th overall out of the 55 countries evaluated in the study. The first table on the right shows the top ten countries ranked in the Country RepTrak released in June 2018. In March 2019, Reputation Institute compiled and released the annual Global RepTrak 100 study, a ranking of corporate reputation is calculated after surveying more than 230,000 people from among the general public in 15 countries. The second table on the right shows the top ten companies ranked in RepTrak released in March 2019.
