| The Brand Trust Report, India Study, 2011 | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | N Chandramouli |
| Country | India |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Trust Research Advisory |
| Publication date | January 18, 2011 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 116 |
| ISBN | 978-81-920823-0-1 |
The Brand Trust Report, India Study, 2011 (ISBN 978-81-920823-0-1) is published by Trust Research Advisory (TRA). The book is a result of a syndicated primary research on Brand Trust that generated 10,00,000 data points and 16,000 unique brands from over 10,000 hours of fieldwork conducted in 9 cities [1] TRA’s study partners in this research were Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and eNxt Financials [1]. The research report is available in hardcase.
The basis of the study is the proprietary 61-components of Brand Trust, conducted across 2310 corporate respondents targeted in this study who have an influencers’ profile. The report has a detailed analysis of the Most Trusted Brands in India and has listings of the All-India 300. The report will be useful to Communicators, CEOs, Advertisers and professionals of Public relations in India.
Contents |
Trust, in its most basic form, is the quality of anything being considered trustworthy or believable. This environment of trust is the essential foundation for any progressive transaction to take place, and it is the primary bond on which every other positive response is built.
There have been various theories of Brand Trust, but none which is comprehensive. In our research, we approached Brand Trust from the viewpoints of the Trustor (the one trusts), Trustee (the one who is being trusted) and the Environment. All three are quintessential to build a strong edifice of Brand Trust.
Brand Trust is built on three levels of foundation. The first level of foundation is to create the ‘Capacity to Trust’ in the Trustor, by making the environment conducive for assuming a degree of vulnerability in the relationship. The second foundation is to build a ‘Perception of Positive Intention’, in which the intent of the Trustee must be perceived as beneficial to the relationship. The third and final foundation of building trust is to showcase that the Trustee has ‘Relevant Competence’ for the trust assigned.
These three foundations of Brand Trust are made up of 10 Composites grouped from 61 primary attributes of Brand Trust. Here, we discuss these three stepping stones to Brand Trust in their sequential order.
Nokia stands out as India’s most trusted brand. Significant, however, is the fact that a comparison of the Brand Trust Indices of Nokia with the second most trusted brand, Tata, is higher by more than 26%, leaving a large gap between the indices of the two. Sony, which takes the third place in the Brand Trust study is 18% behind Tata. With the same trend flowing down, average Brand Trust Index differences in the first 10 brands is just a little than 17% showing that wide gaps exist in the BTR A-List. Just to show how distanced the Brand Trust indices in this list are, the BT index of the first, Nokia, leads fifth on the list, Samsung, a whopping 229%.
The Brand Trust of the jointly-owned brand Reliance makes a valid case for both groups contributing significantly to its sixth position. The Tata Group is the only one to have two brands in the top 10, with Titan making entry at the tenth position. The significance of trust placed on brands like Maruti and LIC lend to the immense potential that public sector units (current and erstwhile) have/had, both of which have been able to ably monetize the trust placed in them. Airtel is the only mobile operator in the privileged top 10 BTR list.
Further, the high skewing of Brand Trust in favor of the top 5 brands is evident since the Brand Trust index total of the first 5 brands is five times the total BT index of the next 45 brands.
The category that gets the highest trust score is the white-goods segment titled Durables in this graph. This is followed very closely by Personal Gadgets (which includes mobile phones, cameras) and a high involvement category like Finance is third highest on Category Trust.
Despite their highly tangible nature and the perception of size, Large Industries and Manufacturing sectors are bottom-scrapers; their intense focus on the tangibles itself may be their undoing (implying that they may be lacking focus on the intangible and behavioral attributes, leading to an erosion of trust). Healthcare is also among the lowest Brand Trust categories despite the thought that what this sector would need the most is trust. What maybe most reflective of our times is perhaps the Category Trust of Media (specifically news media) which dots the very bottom, and has the lowest trust among categories.
Food & Beverage, a category among the top 300, features the largest number of brands, garnering more than 11% of the brands. Personal Accessories and Consumer Products are close behind (with approximately 9% of the numbers each). There are 22 brands from Internet & Technology (which includes hardware, software & internet). Healthcare, Media and Manufacturing, apart from having the lowest Category Trust, also feature the least number of brands.
India is a land of paradoxes and understanding its contradictions can be really difficult. With 28 states, 7 union territories, 22 official languages, and 13 dialects for the national language Hindi alone, India is a mosaic with intricacy at its best. Even within the four zones of India, the differences between States are stark, and sometimes even confusing. An inter-culture diffusion is setting in, largely on account of job related migrations. Despite this, the unique regional distinctions are still sharp as ever, and understanding the cultural, social and behavioral aspects of the local regions is imperative for understanding India as a whole.
In this chapter we try to understand how the various zones exhibit their trust on brands, and by this exercise we may perhaps create one more way to understand the four zones, and thereby India, better. In this study, the 2217 valid respondents (reduced from 2310, after eliminating 93 respondents who showed bias in their answers) were divided city-wise, and the zone numbers were kept close to the population estimation figures of these zones for 2010.
The 50 Most Trusted Brands in India, listed from a total of 16,000 brands studied in the report
1. NOKIA - Not a trusted name now a days[4]
2. TATA[5]
3. SONY
4. LG Electronics
5. Samsung
6. Reliance Industries
7. Maruti Suzuki[6]
8. LIC
9. Airtel
10. Titan
11. State Bank of India
12. Bajaj Group
13. Hero Honda
14. Reebok
15. Infosys
16. Vodafone
17. Colgate (toothpaste)
18. Bata
19. Haier
20. Raymond Group
21. Adidas
22. Godrej Group
23. HP
24. Lux (soap)
25. Philips
26. Levi's
27. Dell
28. HDFC
29. HCL
30. Microsoft
31. Nike
32. IBM
33. BMW
34. Onida Electronics
35. ICICI
36. Pepsi
37. Wipro
38. Idea Cellular
39. Hindustan Unilever
40. Pond's
41. Dove
42. Videocon
43. Hyundai
44. Lee
45. Dabur
46. Dettol
47. Lakme
48. Birla
49. Apple Inc.
50. McDonald's[7]
The other brands listed among the top 300 published in the report include Amul[8] at 57th rank and Sachin Tendulkar [9] at 59th rank among the 16,000 brands studied.