Which U.S. retailers made Caliber’s Most Trusted & Liked list?
Caliber released its annual U.S. Fortune 30 Most Trusted & Liked Companies Survey, finding that Amazon, Costco and UPS have the best corporate reputation among the biggest listed companies in the United States in 2024, just ahead of well-respected brands like FedEx and Lowe’s.
The same study also found that significantly more companies fell in the Trust & Like Score ranking, compared to years past when reputation scores have risen or remained neutral.
Amazon, Costco and UPS topped the list with a TLS of 78—two points lower than last year for Amazon and one point higher for both Costco and UPS. Costco and UPS are two of only five companies on the list this year to improve their TLS. Freight and package delivery company FedEx followed at a score of 77 and home improvement and hardware store chains Lowe’s and Home Depot tied for third at 76 points.
“Amazon maintains its strong reputation and position at the top of the list, which likely reflects its consistent presence in most Americans’ lives and its continued drive to innovate,” said Caliber CEO Shahar Silbershatz. “The fact that Amazon has maintained this lead even with a two-point drop in its Trust & Like Score is an impressive sign of the reputational capital it has banked, given the reputational hurdles like employee strikes that it faced in 2024. The company’s investments in and partnership with OpenAI rival Anthropic likely also contributed to its position at the top of the list and the 44.4% increase in its share price, keeping it competitive for its key stakeholders.”
[Read more: Which retailers and drug manufacturers made Newsweek’s 'World’s Most Trustworthy Companies' list?]
Here are this year’s top 10 retailers:
- Amazon
- Costco
- UPS
- FedEx
- Lowe’s
- The Home Depot
- Kroger
- CVS Health
- Target
- Walmart
[Read more: Which retailers, distributors made Newsweeks’ America's Greatest Workplaces for Diversity 2024 list?]
A string of household names filled out the top 10 this year, including retailers Kroger, Lowe’s, CVS and Target. Other notable rankings include Apple (12th place with a TLS of 70, down four points from 2023), Meta (29th place with a TLS of 54, down four) and Tesla (30th place with a TLS of 53, down nine). This cemented Tesla’s status as the biggest faller of the year, its TLS having fallen further than any other company by a margin of at least five.
Caliber’s annual Trusted & Liked Score ranking is based on a daily tracking study that measures public perceptions of the 30 largest and most visible Fortune 500 companies, selected based on their annual revenue and familiarity among the general public. This year’s results are based on 14,230 evaluations throughout 2024 representing the U.S. population.
The Trusted & Liked Score is a metric developed by Caliber that measures a company's reputation and brand strength. Companies can use this information to better understand their stakeholders and improve communications and stakeholder relations.
Caliber uses the Trusted & Liked Score as its chief metric because research shows that stakeholder behavior is closely linked to the degree to which people trust and like a company. The Score is calculated by averaging responses to two sentences: "[Company] is a company I like" and "[Company] is a company I trust." The results are then compared to a normative scale to determine if the score is positive or negative.
