Who Are America's Most Hated Companies?

According to the Economist magazine, the (dis)honor goes to a number of companies including Microsoft ("Type 'hate Bill Gates' into Google even now, and you will probably get over 15,000 hits. Type 'love Bill Gates', and on a good day (for Mr Gates) you may get 2,000.), the (obvious choice) of Enron, and the big tobacco companies. As for the latter, "'If you are killing people, it doesn't matter whether you are creating shareholder value, you are still bad,' observes Mason Carpenter, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business." Especially, if, unlike with alcohol and fast food, you have been dishonest about the effects of your product over the years.

On the other hand:

A straw poll by Fred Bateman, a professor of economics at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business, brings us to the present. He asked three classes in economics, about 100 students in all, which company they thought was the most hated in America. They almost all said Wal-Mart.

I personally find this hardly surprising given the way Wal-Mart treats prospective and current employees.  For instance, it wrote a well-publicized memo on how NOT to hire unhealthy workers and the unaffordability of its health care coverage for a large segment of its workers forces many of them onto Medicaid (which BTW make its TV commercials to the contrary gut-wrenching). When you add the alleged use of illegal immigrants as workers and the million person on-going class action sex discrimination lawsuit, one hardly need to mentions its harsh anti-union tactics to see why Wal-Mart has even evoked the wrath of so many, including the iconoclastic writers of the South Park cartoon.

In any event, Gordon Smith of the Conglomerate blog who brought this story to my attention, asks some important questions about Wal-Mart including, "[W]hether Wal-Mart hatred is a class thing. The 'elites' hate Wal-Mart, but ordinary people don't?"

The Economist itself comes to this conclusion about big business in America:

But still, a few general truths emerge. The main one is that Americans are generally accepting of big business, but only so long as they feel in control of it, as citizens or as consumers. They lose that sense when a company wins a monopoly for its products, or when it comes busting into a community and displacing local commerce, or when its
officers break the law. When that happens, they are disproportionately shocked and hostile, because they see it as a violation both of the natural order of things, and of their trust.

Who will face the wrath of Americans next most likely? Big Oil. "A Gallup poll in August found that 42% of Americans disliked the oil industry, including 35% who disliked it very much indeed."

I myself wonder how much a role the characteristics of the workplace and the treatment of employees play in causing an employer to be unpopular among consumer? It can't just be general corporate dishonesty, greed, and bullying of other businesses, can it?

PS