Drug companies aren’t
exactly known for their reputations.
But public opinions about them
have changed in some surprising ways in recent years, especially amidst
recent controversies over the
high and rising prices
of drugs.
A new analysis from the research
consulting firm Reputation Institute evaluated public perceptions of
14 pharmaceutical companies in 7 key areas: 1) products and services, 2)
innovation, 3) workplace, 4) governance, 5) citizenship, 6) leadership, and 7)
financial performance.
The report found that on
average, drug companies continue to be perceived as having a so-so
reputation. In fact, people’s opinion of the
pharmaceutical industry overall has improved since 2015.
Yet Kasper Ulf Nielsen, an
executive partner at the Reputation Institute, told Business Insider that these
average ratings hide some of the more interesting aspects of the results. For
one thing, people tend to have polar opposite views of individual companies,
either ranking them as having an “excellent” or “poor” reputation. The company
with the highest reputation was Bayer. Also, young people aged 18-24 had a
significantly lower impression of pharmaceutical companies than did older people.
Check out the Reputation
Institute’s drug company scores, ranked from lowest to highest:
14. Pfizer.
RepTrack Points: 65.9
Pfizer,
which is known for drugs like Lipitor and Viagra, was ranked
the second-most familiar of the 14 drug companies
analyzed by the Reputation Institute. Pfizer didn’t fare as well as
its pharma counterparts in terms of its reputational ranking, though they
did score better than in previous years’ rankings.
Survey
respondents ranked the company’s workplace environment,
citizenship (or responsibility to stakeholders), and governance as being the
worst compared to all the other drug companies.
13. Bristol-Myers Squibb. RepTrack Points: 66.0
Bristol-Myers Squibb, the New
York-based pharmaceutical company known for its diabetes and heart-related
drugs, didn’t have much of a change in perceived reputation in 2016
compared to 2015. BMS reputation scores were particularly low when it came
to the company’s leadership and innovation reputation.
12.
Novartis. RepTrack Points: 66.7
Switzerland-based
Novartis rounds out the bottom three with a slightly higher reputation than
last year. Novartis’ reputation score was brought down by lower governance
and citizenship scores.
11.
GlaxoSmithKline. RepTrack Points: 66.9
GlaxoSmithKline, headquartered
in the UK, raised its RepTrack score in 2016. One reason for this is that
survey respondents said they perceived the company as having better overall
performance and innovation.
10. AbbVie.
RepTrack Points: 67.0
AbbVie, the North
Chicago-based company that spun out of Abbott Laboratories in 2013, was one of
the two additions to this year’s Reputation Institute report. It scored its
lowest reputational rankings in products and services, leadership, and
performance.
TIE 8. Eli Lilly. RepTrack Points: 67.1
People’s perceptions of the
reputation of Eli Lilly, the Indianapolis-based company known for its diabetes
medications, didn’t change too much from 2015 to 2016.
TIE 8.
AstraZeneca. RepTrack Points: 67.1
AstraZeneca is a
British-Swedish pharmaceutical company known most widely for its acid reflux
medication Nexium. Its reputation scores were relatively middle of the road
across the reputational subcategories.
7. Allergan.
RepTrack Points: 67.5
Allergan, the other newcomer
to the Reputation Institute list and the maker of Botox, spent much of its
first quarter with plans for a mega-merger with Pfizer. Nevertheless, survey respondents said they did
not see the company as very innovative, and these low ranking reduced the
company’s overall score.
6. Sanofi.
RepTrack Points: 67.8
Sanofi, a French company known
in part for its diabetes medicines and vaccine program, rose through the
reputation ranks from #10 in 2015 to #6, scoring particularly high in
terms of how people perceived its workplace.
5. Merck.
RepTrack Points: 68.3
New Jersey-based Merck jumped
from #11 to #5 in 2016. The makers of Gardasil, the vaccine designed to protect
against the sexually transmitted infection HPV, and the drug accredited
with helping former President Jimmy
Carter get cancer-free, consistently
scored high in all of the reputational subcategories.
4. Roche.
RepTrack Points: 68.4
Swiss pharmaceutical company
Roche was one of the best-known companies of the bunch. Roche has its hands in
a lot of cancer research, most recently seeing the approval of a bladder
cancer drug and
putting in major investments in technology companies.
3. Novo
Nordisk. RepTrack Points: 68.5
Novo Nordisk, a Danish
pharmaceutical company, dominated the Reputation Institute’s reputational
subcategories of citizenship, governance, and innovation, bumping its
reputation ranking from #7 in 2015 to the #3 spot this year.
2. Abbott
Laboratories. RepTrack Points: 68.7
Abbott Laboratories, which
makes everything from nutrition products to diabetes monitoring systems, came
in second in terms of its overall reputation.
1. Bayer.
RepTrack Points: 70.6
Bayer, the German company that
has its hands in everything from pharmaceuticals to consumer products like
Aspirin and Alka Seltzer to agriculture products, came out on top as the only company
on the list with a “strong” reputation (as opposed to average).
Bayer dominated the Reputation
Institute’s reputational subcategories of leadership, performance,
products/services, and workplace.