The Loved and the Unloved

Wall Street may have soured on the computer industry, but consumers have not. In a Gallup poll on people’s opinions of various industries (see the chart below), 27 percent expressed “very positive” views of the computer sector, with another 40 percent being “somewhat positive.” Just 1 percent were “very negative.” Polling for the M Booth/Harris Trust Monitor found similar esteem for computer companies. When respondents were asked to say whether 13 industries “generally do a good job or bad job of serving their customers,” computer software and hardware companies ran first and second (with “good” votes of 80 percent and 78 percent respectively).