A question of trust

The survey participants make up a well-educated and media literate group.

Trust in NGOs is relatively high, with 61% of participants saying they trust NGOs to do what is right, while 56% will say the same for business, 52% will trust government and 49% expressed trust in the media.

Differences in developing vs developed

Differences in the developing vs developed economy markets emerge quite clearly in the survey, with people in emerging economies such as Brazil (81%), India (70%) and China (61%) largely believing that business will do what is right, compared to developed markets such as France (48%), the UK (44%) and the US (46%), where the majority of survey participants are sceptical.

In emerging economies, the media might well be less-focused on issues that may negatively affect brands, including green-washing, labour exploitation and consumer issues, at the same time as people are looking to corporations to improve living conditions through employment. Trust in NGOs are on par with that of business in emerging markets but remain more trusted than business in developed markets, according to the survey.

In terms of trusting specific industries to do what is right, participants scored tech (81%), automotive (69%) and telecom (68%) firms highest. Insurance (52%), banks (51%) and financial services (50%) made up the bottom three sectors, not surprisingly given the recent global financial crisis and following recession. Trust in the financial sector was hurt hardest in developed economies, dropping from 71% to 25% in the US, and from 46% to 16% in the UK.

Asked what matters most for corporate reputation, product/service quality (69%), transparency (65%), trust (65%) and employee welfare (63%) ranked highest while financial return to investors ranked lowest (31%) (once again the financial sector misses the trust boat).

Proliferation of opinion

The proliferation of opinion, driven by social media, has led to suggestions that brands are increasingly being judged by word of mouth, but the survey suggests academic/expert (probably independent) advice are most prized by survey participants, followed by technical experts inside the company, industry analysts and the CEO. Trust in "people like yourself" fell from 47% in 2009 to 43% in 2011.

CEOs are increasingly emerging as the public voices of their companies (unless you are Cell C - for that you hire a comedian), while social services such as Facebook has made a lot of non-friend 'friends' - which would diminish the trust people put in the advice we receive from contacts on such networks.

In terms of trust, government figures are skewed by China and Brazil, where 88% and 85% of participants trust their governments' to do the right thing, while the rest of the countries surveyed seems to hover well below 50%, and in some instances under 40% (Russia and Germany with the US just making 40%). The Chinese might either a) not know better thanks to government censorship or b) be conditioned to say good things about the ruling party in public. Brazil is more interesting, and results might look a lot different if the survey extended beyond the upper middle income audience, the main beneficiaries of that country's booming economy as targeted by the survey.

Trust that the media will do the right thing is again skewed by China (80%) and Brazil (73%). In the US, this falls to 27% (possibly because of increasing partisanship in the liberal/conservative media divide, driven by personality focused news and talk shows) and the UK with 22%. Information overload and the tabloidisation of the media would surely play a role in the low points scored by the press, a term that has expanded to include everyone from the editor of the Guardian to the paparazzi shooting for scandal rags and bloggers of every description.

Online search engines

Online search engines are now the go-to first source for company news (29%) (hello Google News) followed by news services (19%). Print comes in at 15%, followed by broadcast media with 12%. A plurality of voices seems to be increasingly important to the modern reader/viewer. Twelve percent of survey participants would turn to a company website for news, while social media lags behind at 5% as a first source for news.

The survey also found that, when a company is distrusted, 57% will believe negative information after hearing it 1-2 times and only 15% will believe positive information. On the flipside, 25% will believe negative news from a company that is trusted after hearing it 1-2 times while 51% will believe positive information.