The supermarket industry does the best job of serving consumers, according to the annual Harris Poll that ranks industries on how well they serve consumers, reports MarketingCharts.

The poll also found that there have been substantial changes in consumer opinion since last year, with two-thirds of the industries trending downward.

Fully 92 percent of adults think supermarkets generally do a good job, and only 8 percent think they do a bad job, giving them a net positive score of 84 percentage points.

At the bottom of the list: Only 26 percent think tobacco companies do a good job, while one-third (33 percent) believe oil companies do a good job.

Other industries that received high net scores:

• Online search engines (77 points positive)
• Computer hardware companies (64 points positive)
• Computer software companies (61 points positive)
• Hospitals (58 points positive)
• Banks (56 points positive)
• Packaged food companies (55 points positive)

At the other end of the spectrum, the industries with the worst net scores are these:

• Tobacco companies (46 points negative)
• Oil companies (33 points negative)
• Health insurance companies (21 points negative)
• Managed care companies, such as hmos (20 points negative)
• Cable companies (1 point negative)

Ten-Year Trends

Harris Interactive started asking these questions in 1997. Looking across the past decade, of the 13 industries on the list in 1997 only three (banks, car manufacturers and hospitals) have seen an increase - and the increases are all less than 5 points.

Ten industries, however, have declined, with airlines and oil companies dropping the most (40 points and 57 points, respectively).

MarketingCharts reports on the industries that underwent significant decreases in popularity in recent years.