• by Aaron Baar , March 14, 2013

Technology, media and web-based companies dominate the list of brands consumers list as the “most influential,” indicating how important the technological world has become to everyday lives. 

Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook and eBay dominate the top 10 list of companies deemed by U.S. consumers to be most influential, based on surveys that rate companies according to several different categories including corporate citizenship, engagement, trustworthiness, innovation and presence, according to new research from Ipsos.

“Our daily lives are infused with the integration of web, technology and media and these brands allow us to access, gather and share information with tremendous ease,” says Jerry Forristal, senior vice president at Ipsos MarketQuest. “That in turn helps to influence our daily decisions. And with the proliferation of smartphones, tablets and similar mobile devices, we’re able to take these brands and their influence almost everywhere we go.”

While it’s not surprising so many influential brands come from the technology and web-based worlds, the other companies that populate the top 10 for the U.S. (Visa, Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble) demonstrate how all brands can be influential in consumers’ lives. 

“Many of the brands out there are companies that are very high on trust, and have very strong futures,” Forristal tells Marketing Daily. “There are lots of different ways of becoming influential. Visa’s [strength] is that they’re everywhere. You can go everywhere in the world and people trust it implicitly.”

Procter & Gamble, meanwhile, was cited for being able to understand consumers’ needs, Forristal says. Wal-Mart, meanwhile, has a presence unmatched by others in the brick-and-mortar world, while Yahoo and eBay are very skilled at engaging their customers.

Outside of the U.S. (the surveys were conducted in nine markets, including Canada,  Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, UK, France, Germany, and China), Google continued to dominate, showing how influential and widespread the brand has become. 

“A lot of people still think of [Google] as search, but they’re so much more than that,” Forristal says. “Building a truly influential brand requires a significant time investment, and in the past fifteen years, Google has done something truly phenomenal – they’ve built a brand that exerts global influence.” 

The others on the top 10 global list include Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Visa, Coca-Cola, Samsung,  YouTube, MasterCard and P&G.