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According to the dictionary, reputation is "the opinion or consideration in which someone or something is held." Corporate reputation is a newer, broader concept that takes on special value in times of uncertainty. Among other benefits, prestige improves stock prices, attracts talent, enhances the commercial supply of goods and services and dampens the impact in the event of possible crises, such as the one facing Argentina today.

Once again and for the tenth time in a row, Arcor, the company of the Pagani family, leads the ranking of the 100 companies with the best reputation in the country, ahead of Mercado Libre, Toyota, Google and Unilever, according to the Reputation Business Monitor Corporativa 2019 (the Merco ranking), a research prepared by the Spanish Institute Analysis and Research, whose results are audited by the consulting firm KPMG.

This year, the top ten is completed by Quilmes, Natura, Banco Galicia, Mercedes-Benz and Santander Río. A first analysis indicates that only three Argentine companies make up the top ten (the first two, Arcor and Mercado Libre, and Banco Galicia, which occupies the 8th place). High transnationalization is a very particular feature of Argentina: among the 100, only 32% are of local origin, which contrasts with Merco's records in other countries, including Colombia (67%), Spain (62%) , Chile (61%), Peru (57%), Brazil (50%) and Mexico (45%).

In this edition of Merco, one of the most significant leaps was that of Mercado Libre, which climbed from 13th to 2nd. In addition, its CEO and co-founder Marcos Galperin was 1st among the most recognized business leaders instead of Luis Pagani, who had won the previous 9 editions. Anyway, Arcor has another merit. It is the only company, together with the Anglo-Dutch Unilever, which has always been in the top ten since the Merco.

The Merco is an annual multistakeholder evaluation, which released a total of 16,083 surveys from 24 sources of information. The process, which took place between April and August of this year, goes through 6 evaluative phases of reputational merits. In the first instance, 720 senior executives of companies that invoice more than US $ 30 million prepare a provisional ranking with the 100 most mentioned, without order. And they collect points according to the opinion of the interest groups linked to the corporate sphere, to establish the final ranking from the maximum possible score of 10,000, as happened with Arcor and Galperin.

The report indicates that the sector that brings more companies to this edition of Merco is the technology sector, with a total of 10. It is followed by the automotive sector, with 9, and the food and pharmaceutical sector, with 8 companies each. In the universe of the first 10, there are 3 mass consumption (Arcor, Unilever and Quilmes), 2 technology (Mercado Libre and Google), 2 automakers (Toyota and Mercedes-Benz), 2 banks (Galicia and Santader Río), and one of cosmetics (Natura).
Merco emerged at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, in 2000. It was designed with the purpose of exporting it by applying the same methodology in all countries. Thus, successively, it has been carried out in Colombia since 2008, Argentina and Chile (2010), Ecuador (2011), Peru (2012), Brazil, Mexico and Bolivia (2013), Costa Rica, Panama and Portugal (2017). Panama and Portugal joined in 2018 and this year it landed in Paraguay, Uruguay and Guatemala. And there are 5 other countries on the waiting list.

Reputation is the recognition of a company's interest groups (consumers, employees, shareholders, etc.) about their corporate behavior. For this reason, prestige is considered a more stable asset than the image, closely linked to the conjunctural. This condition is reflected in the Merco ranking, whose results do not introduce drastic variations with respect to the previous measurements.

The abrupt jumps exist, but they are not habitual and for that reason they excel. Netflix gave the big surprise: if it does not appear, in 2018 it enters the 40th position. The same as Bioceres (71) and Novartis (80). Philips (98 to 56), BBVA (from 40 to 16), Nestlé (from 42 to 17) and Fiat (from 97 to 69) also climbed strong.

The most pronounced falls were those of General Motors (from 36 to 63), Dow (64 to 88), McDonald’s (from 28 to 58) and Pfizer (from 79 to 96). Avon's case deserves to be highlighted, because it fell 40 places (from 60 ° to 100 °). The decline coincides with the announcement of the purchase of the North American company - last May - by Natura, an operation that turned the Brazilian giant into the 4th largest beauty group in the world.

Compared to last year's measurement, there are 9 uploads to the list of 100 and as many casualties. Those who enter are Netflix (40), Bioceres (71), Novartis (80), AGD (90), Sinergium Biotech (94), McKinsey (95), Bodega Catena Zapata (97), Invap (98) and Adecoagro (99). The ones that came out were Starbucks, PWC, Irsa, Tetra Pak, Cablevision, Acíndar, PSAPeugeot Citroën, Monsanto and Dupont.

Finally, the director of Merco, Manuel Sevillano, underlines the decline of Facebook. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal over data leaks, the social network dropped year after year from 37 to 62. Warren Buffett warned that "it takes more than 20 years to build a reputation and only 5 minutes to destroy it."

In parallel to the rankings of companies and business leaders, three others were prepared, whose results also affect the overall evaluation. The Merco Consumption (emerged from the opinion of 3,130 citizens). People's 10 favorite companies were Google, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, Adidas, Visa, Arcor, Mercado Libre, Unilever, Samsung and Nike.

The Merco Talent, which measures the attractiveness of companies, led by Banco Galicia, ahead of Toyota, Unilever, Arcor, Google, Santander, Coca-Cola, BBVA, Naranja and Quilmes. This according to the opinion of 7,518 workers, 501 university students, 500 former students of business schools, 58 human resources managers, 39 headhunters and 2,956 citizens.

This year, finally, the Merco Digital debuts, whose objective is to analyze the reputation in the digital field. The study was carried out in collaboration with Nethodolo.gy and was based on own information, social networks, influencers and users. The top ten is made up of Accenture, Grupo Insud, Natura, Volkswagen, YPF, Telefónica, La Nación, Toyota, Clarín and Arcor.

The rest of the stakeholders chose according to specific variables: professors of the business area (Google), financial analysts (Mercado Libre), journalists of economic information (Mercado Libre), state officials (Arcor), NGOs (Arcor), unions (Laboratories Roemmers), consumer associations (Natura) and social media managers (Netflix). clarin.com

Automatic translation from spanish.