Loyalty versus Trust

Edelman is the world's leading independent Public relations firm (at least that is what they advertise). Of interest is their Edelman Trust Barometer. They have just released their 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer Survey results. They report that they sampled 4,875 informed participants in two age groups (25-34) and (35-64). In order to qualify for the survey each must be college-educated with a household income in the top quartile for their age in their country. They must also read or watch business/news media at least several times a week and follow public policy issues in the news at least several times a week. Each interview participates in a 25-minute telephone. The results published in the 2010 survey was based on interviews between September 29 and December 6, 2009. The measurement is based on a 9-point Likert-type scale for trust. The scale notes that 1 denotes the lowest trust and d9 represents the highest trust.

With this background, it appears that their measurement system appears to follow sound survey techniques. They have summarized some of the general results that maybe of interest, namely,
1. Global trust in business is up modestly for the year.
2. The gain may be due to a spiked increase in a handful of Western countries. The trust measurement increased 18 points to 54% for the United States.
3. Trust also remains high in Brazil, India and China who each have a trust measurement higher than 60%.
4. The quality of products and services ranks higher than financial returns. according to Mr. Edelman,"Trust is now an essential line of business to be developed and delivered.
5. There appears concern by the majority that there will be a return to business as usual by companies as the economy recovers.
6. Sweden, Canada and Germany remain the most trusted countries for global headquarters.
7. Trust in government appears to be stable. However, the trust in the US is up 16 points to 46% and in Russia trust has decreased by 10 points to 38%.
8. In 20 countries corporate or product advertising continues to be the least credible source of information at 17%.
9. Reports from industry analysts and articles in business magazines remain the most credible sources of information about a company. However, the trust in mainstream media is waning.

Mr. Edelman notes that "we're seeing a vastly different set of factors driving reputation that we did 10 years ago". This is consistent with measures of loyalty that appear to have very different factors driving loyalty with an individual company.

The bottom line is that we now have another measure by which we can assess a company's strength in the market. The next step will be to compare these measures of trust with financial performance as has already been done using the ACSI measurement.

To learn more about the Trust Barometer you can find Edelman on the web at www.edelman.com.