At a time when 7 in 10 consumers believe their data is less protected than in the past, how brands use consumer data is crucial to maintaining brand trust. The most recent Consumers Data Trust Index [download page] from Jebbit looks at how brands can lose the trust of consumers.
What Leads to Brand Distrust?
When brands ask for data, they might be well-advised to limit how many questions they ask. Indeed, about one-third (35%) of consumers ranked asking for too much information as their top reason for distrusting a brand when providing their personal information.
Asking too many questions was even ahead of other factors such as involvement in a public data scandal (21%), experiencing “creepy” advertising (18%), confusing privacy policies (15%) and inaccurate marketing information (11%).
How Brands Use Consumer Data Matters
As brands focus on using data to personalizing the customer journey and experience, not all consumers are completely on board. Only 31% say an improved customer experience based on the data a brand has about them would build their trust in a brand, while 22% say it would make them less likely to trust the brand. However, the largest share (47%) say it would make them just as likely to trust the brand.
How brands communicate with consumers can also have a major effect on brand trust. Even though consumers admit to acting on a personalized message, fewer than one-fifth say they want personalized ads or recommendations. When it comes to messaging, it appears using data the consumer has knowingly shared with a brand is the best way to grow trust.
While sending personalized emails using shared data (39%) and implementing interactive experiences (38%) and chatbots (31%) increases consumer trust, using unshared data for personalized emails (54%) and ads (53%) is more likely to decrease trust.
It’s also worth noting that while the majority (66%) of the consumers surveyed support federal data privacy legislation, support has dropped from the 80% who said the same in Q1 2020.
Tech Brands Are the Most Trusted
Tech brands rated highest of all the industries analyzed, with an average rating of 6.52 (on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being “completely trusted”). In fact, four of the top five spots are held by tech brands.
Leading the pack for the fourth time is Amazon. As the largest e-commerce retailer in the US, Amazon tops the list of 100 brands with an overall rating of 7.05. Netflix (6.89), Google (6.83) and Samsung (6.79) join Amazon, ranking #3, #4 and #5, respectively.
The report notes that the Tech industry maintains its top ranking despite tech brands like Lyft (#93) and Facebook (#97) falling towards the bottom of the top 100 list.
The full report can be found here.
About the Data: Findings are based on a Q2 2021 survey of 1,000 US adults.
