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NEWS BRAND TRUST NOT ‘MAKE OR BREAK’ New research has found that Australian consumers are still happy to purchase from brands they distrust, contradicting much of the conventional wisdom around branding. Strategic research and consulting agency Fifth Dimension has conducted research into the nature of brand trust with 5,000 consumers, and found people continue to buy from brands they distrust, provided they personally gain from the relationship. Fifth Dimension founder and Managing Director Lyndall Spooner says the research has shown that brand trust is a poor predictor of consumer behaviour, in particular the share of spend and emotional connection to a brand. “Especially during the Covid-19 pandemic where brand loyalty has weakened, companies should be focusing their attention on meeting the needs of their customers better than what their competitors are doing, rather than investing in trust,” she said. “That’s where they need to invest in order to drive growth.” According to Fifth Dimension, the conventional wisdom about brand trust may be incorrect. “Most people think brand trust can make or break your company,” Ms Spooner said. “Our research shows that this might not be true. Of consumers who distrust a brand they are already using, 70 per cent say they will maintain or increase the number of products they have with that brand. “This may be a surprising revelation for a lot of people, and it certainly was for us. But when you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense. After all, brand trust is linked to brand awareness and brand awareness is linked to brand prevalence, or how common that brand is in daily life. “You may not trust Google, but you might use Google Home. Most people don’t trust Facebook, especially after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but how many of us have a Facebook page? A lot of people don’t trust big tech companies like Apple, but they still use Apple products. “A lot of people have a naturally distrustful attitude that doesn’t actually translate into consumer behaviour. They say they distrust a brand but when push comes to shove, they will still use it. If you think about it, we all use brands that we distrust.” Fifth Dimension research suggests that even if your brand isn’t trusted, it’s not the end of the world. Its research reveals increasing trust among consumers leads to one of the lowest financial returns for companies. “Investing in increasing brand trust isn’t the best investment,” 18 CONVENIENCE WORLD SEP/OCT, 2020 Ms Spooner said. “This is because we can see that brand trust does not predict customer behaviour.” Spend patterns across several industries shows investing money to grow brand trust achieves only a seven per cent increase in monthly spend. According to Fifth Dimension, alternative metrics such as customer satisfaction or the competitive strength of a brand have a stronger relationship with customer behaviour and spend. “Improving metrics that align with customer behaviour can increase monthly spending on your brand by more than 50 per cent,” Ms Spooner said. “The goal of any business should be to focus on the needs of your customers and the best way of meeting them. Focusing too much on trust will give the opportunity to your competitors to consume your market share. Don’t let them do that.” Fifth Dimension has also found that Australian consumers have different interpretations of what it means to trust a brand. When asked about whether they trust a brand, consumers interpreted the question in two very different ways. “Consumers have very different understandings of trust. Fifth Dimension found that 60 per cent of consumers interpret trust as a company being able to do what they promise. Meanwhile, the other 40 per cent of consumers interpret trust as whether the company is ethical in how they operate. These are two radically different interpretations,” Ms Spooner said. “According to Fifth Dimension research, those who interpret trust to be around capability are 30 per cent more likely to trust brands. Whereas if you view trust as linked to ethics, you’re much less likely to trust brands. In fact, this group is 88 per cent more likely to say they distrust brands.” Fifth Dimension, however, has also found that consumers often don’t know why they trust or distrust brands in the first place. The findings suggest that brand trust is a less reliable measure of a brand relationship. “We found that 52 per cent of all consumers are unable to give any reason for why they trust a brand,” Ms Spooner said. “If people don’t even know why they trust or distrust something, it suggests they are not emotionally involved in that opinion. It makes no sense to be investing in a brand measure that has such weak emotional and rational linkage to consumers just because we think it should.”