What is Brand Trust?

At Lifestory Research, we spend every day exploring how people form opinions about the brands they encounter. One of the most powerful forces shaping those opinions is brand trust.

But what exactly is brand trust? And why does it play such a vital role in how people make decisions about where to live, what to buy, or whom to rely on?

In this article, we break down the academic foundations of brand trust in simple terms—what it is, how it’s been studied, and why it’s critical in today’s fast-changing consumer landscape.

What Is Brand Trust?

In everyday life, trust is what allows us to depend on others—even in uncertain situations. The same applies to brands.

Brand trust is the confidence a consumer has that a brand will do what it promises. It’s the belief that a product will work, a service will follow through, and a company will act in your best interest—even when things go wrong.

Researchers define brand trust as a mix of two key ideas:

• Reliability: Is the brand competent? Can I count on it to deliver quality, time after time?

• Intentions: Does the brand care about me as a customer? Will it do the right thing?

When both of these are present, brand trust takes root.

The Roots of Trust: How Researchers Understand It

Academic studies dating back decades help us understand where trust comes from and how it works in branding. One of the most influential theories is known as the Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing, developed by Morgan & Hunt in 1994.

This theory says that for any lasting relationship—whether between people or between a person and a brand—trust and commitment must both be present. If a customer trusts a brand and feels committed to it, they’re more likely to:

• Stick with the brand over time

• Recommend it to others

• Forgive mistakes or delays

• Try new offerings from the brand

Another important insight from researchers is that trust has both rational and emotional sides.

• The rational side (called cognitive trust) comes from practical experiences: the product worked, the return policy was easy, the customer service was helpful.

• The emotional side (called affective trust) grows when people feel cared for. It might come from friendly marketing, ethical behavior, or shared values.

Most of us don’t think about these things consciously. But together, they help explain why some brands earn our loyalty—while others lose it.

Why Brand Trust Matters Now

In a world full of choices, trust acts like a filter. It helps people cut through the noise and stick with the brands they believe in.

It’s also increasingly tied to values. Research shows that today’s consumers are more likely to trust brands that demonstrate:

• Transparency in how they do business

• Responsibility toward the community and the environment

• Consistency across every customer touchpoint

That’s why, at Lifestory Research, we track not just who sells the most or advertises the loudest—but who earns the deepest trust.

How We Measure It at Lifestory Research

Our America’s Most Trusted® studies are built on these very principles. We ask thousands of people across the country which brands they know, and which ones they trust—then calculate a Net Trust Quotient Score that reflects the depth of that trust.

It’s not about brand popularity. It’s about real perceptions formed by real people, based on what they’ve seen, heard, and experienced.

The Takeaway

Brand trust isn’t just a buzzword. It’s a core part of how people make decisions—especially in high-stakes categories like housing, home services, and large purchases.

Understanding what drives trust can help companies earn it—and keep it. For consumers, brand trust offers peace of mind in a crowded, complex marketplace.

And at Lifestory Research, we believe trust is something that should be earned—not assumed.

Want to see which brands earned America’s trust this year?
Visit our America’s Most Trusted® rankings to explore the latest results.

Each year millions of households explore and seek a new place to live. As consumers shop for a new home, they encounter new home builders and their associated brands. Having trust in a home builder provides consumers with confidence in making a purchase decision.

Trust is the new currency that consumers are seeking from companies with whom they wish to engage in a purchase relationship. The market research study finds that three out of four (76%) shopping for a new home say that trust is a critical criterion by which they evaluate the purchase decision of a home builder, placing significant emphasis on the perceived trustworthiness of home builder brands.

So, the question is – which home builders are trusted the most by home shoppers?

“To effectively compete in the marketplace, home builders need the trust of those they serve,” said Lifestory Research President and CEO Eric Snider. “We find that customer trust is central among home shoppers as they seek to reduce uncertainty in the high-risk decision of purchasing a new home.”

In a shift away from product usage and satisfaction research, Lifestory Research’s investigation focuses on how brands influence the purchase behavior of home shoppers. “We have seen a fundamental shift in consumer psychology that has occurred in response to the social changes that have taken place over the last decade,” Snider said.  “People are turning to their peers, friends, and digital social networks to garner opinions.  Moreover, in the process of shopping for a home, consumers rely upon their direct experience to formulate a judgment of a home builder.  As a result, we have seen brands rise in importance in the consumer purchase process.” 

Since the inception of the study in 2012, the goal has been to evaluate consumer attitudes from thousands of households who are actively in the process of shopping for a new home in the US.  Trust is measured through the Lifestory Research Net Trust Quotient Score which identifies “trust advocates” and “trust antagonists.” Each Net Trust Quotient Score represents the net value of a brand on trust.  A brand with a high positive score is an indication that the brand is trusted by a large portion of the target market.  Conversely, a low score is an indication that the brand is not trusted by the consumer marketplace. 

ABOUT LIFESTORY RESEARCH

Leaders, companies, and brands know that great ideas are only useful if they move people toward action. Lifestory Research is an independent, science-driven consumer insights and strategy consulting firm that ignites relationships between companies and their audiences. We are passionate about customers, employees, brands, and the science of influence. We use quantitative and qualitative research to create customer insights, drive innovation, deliver brand strategy, and move people forward. Lifestory® and Most Trusted Builder in America® are registered trademarks. No advertising use can be made of this information without the express prior written consent of Lifestory Research.

Most Trusted Builder in America®

Most Trusted Builder in America® is a recognition of home builders that distinguish themselves in the trust they have among new home shoppers. The recognition was first established in 2012 by Lifestory Research, a national consumer research firm.

There’s a formula for getting brand trust right. You’re probably not using it

How are you investing your brand dollars in creating trust? Amazing advertisements? Maverick marketing? Customer facing technology? Breakthrough products? All of these? How much is devoted to your team members?

Is that you whistling past the graveyard?

It’s time to rethink your team members trust, in your product-company-culture-leaders. The most important element of customer trust is the trust of your employee. Establish transparency, honesty, integrity, and benevolence with those who represent you, and customer trust will follow. Capture the trust of your employees and in return reduce costs, increase sales velocity, and hear the cheer of raving fans you call customers.

Regardless if your team members are behind the scenes or engaging in direct face-to-face customer interactions, they are the people that directly impact the trust people hold in your brand.  Your employees, the ones that trust you, come to work every day with a commitment to make a difference. Consider the different trust conditions.  High or low trust employees, High or low trust customers.  Which condition results in business success?

• High trust employees + high trust customers = Guaranteed business success

• High trust employees + low trust customers = Unsustainable business

• Low trust employees + high trust customers = Unlikely and eventual low trust customers

• Low trust employees + low trust customers = Business closing condition

The answer to this question seems so evident, yet, many organizations fail to consider how the origin of customer trust is employee trust.

Every day your employees come to work with expectations about the company, the products, and the people that will make up their day.  High trust employees are confident that the company will stand behind their products, that their leaders will act with integrity, and that their colleagues will strive to do what is right.  In contrast, low trust employees are uncertain about the strength of the company, believe that there is a false narrative regarding the benefit and reliability of the company products, and often have no respect or trust in leadership.

When employees have trust in their company, there is an empirical bottom line advantage.  In a meta-analysis of 58 different studies, researchers have identified that organizations with a trust-based culture produce not only higher financial outcomes, but they also generate engaged employees, delighted customers, and loyal customers.   In our work with companies, we have identified that employee trust has a direct impact on business success.  In a series of work, we have found that when sales professionals trust the company, product and leaders they represent, they outperform the average sales professional by 32%.

While the mountain of evidence is clear, and the simple logic of understanding employee trust is an engine to business success, most organizations do not invest in employee trust building.  Wait, what? Yes, you should be investing in your employees to build trust. Most leaders never consider employees the audience in which they should be investing resources to capture customer trust.  However, that is, in fact, the missing part of the brand trust formula.  Simply stated, invest in trust building with your employees and customer trust will quickly follow.

Brands think, customers feel

Establishing and retaining trust is foundational to the success of any relationship, including the relationship between a brand and its customers.  Trust is essential, yet, brands and their customers often tend to view trust from different vantage points.  Brands reflect on the nature of trust rationally, in which they consider trust as one of the variables included in their business model. In thinking about trust, the brands strategically consider how things such as customer testimonials, online ratings, and positive brand messaging can contribute to brand trust.

When examining trust with an analytic business bias, we tend to think of trust from a cognitive perspective.  Cognition is the cool analytic thinking processes that is critical to the success of running a brand and business.  However, using this decision heuristic comes with consequences.  Namely, as a brand manager we think of the components of trust - competence and reliability – and develop messaging that seeks to reinforce these aspects of trust.  We may ask questions such as “How do we communicate to customers that they can trust our product because it is of high quality and will last a long time?” or “What features will demonstrate to people they can trust the product?”

When forming brand strategies based on cognition, we tend to rely upon knowledge-based approaches that inform and reduce uncertainty. The thinking behind knowledge enhancing messages is that people will form a greater bond of trust if they know more about the brand and its offerings.  Consider recent marketing efforts aimed at you that have sought to inform you.  Likely, these campaigns were aimed at conveying that you could trust the brand because they provide a robust capacity.

While trust strategies derived from rational thinking can undoubtedly benefit a brand, it can lead to overlooking a key means by which people form trust through emotions. Professor Paul Ingram of Columbia Business School, who studies trust in social networks has noted: “we tend to reserve trust from the heart (affect-based trust) for family and friends and trust from the head (cognition-based trust) for business partners.”  Brain science informs us that signals to your brain pass the limbic system - where you feel - before arriving at the rational part of your mind where you think.  In other words, your brand experience is emotional before it is rational.

A central feature of trust is the willingness to make yourself vulnerable to others.  Being vulnerable is about emotion.  There is a risk in extending yourself to others which stirs the emotions of fear and hope.  Affect-based trust is formed when the audience has an emotional connection to the brand.  When forming brand strategies based on affect, research suggests that reaching the audience through referrals or third-party endorsements are an effective approach (Kim 2005) because it makes people feel confident when considering brands from trusted or unbiased sources.

This contrast of feeling versus thinking trust is captured in a recent commercial by Intel in which it found inspiration in the words and music of Supertramp. The song reminds us that while we have been taught to be sensible, logical, responsible, practical, dependable, clinical, and intellectual, there is magic in the unbelievable, in singing so happily.

Trust is important when people consider buying products.  In developing your brand trust strategies keep in mind that both the heart and the head are drawn upon when forming trust. If you’d like to learn more about this topic, visit America’s Most Trusted, our brand research and insights program. Or, consider contacting us directly to learn how we can support your organization.

Trust Inquiries: Building trust one customer at a time

Earning customer trust must be deliberate. It shouldn’t be something you hope happens on its own.  How do you know when and how trust is created in your business?

At Lifestory, we continue to hear from organizations that they tend to limit themselves to a “post-sale” approach to identify customer trust. They say to us: “We know our customers trust us because they bought our product.” And, we agree – the purchase of the product would seem to reflect customer trust. However, we believe that organizations must move past the obvious, and instead, focus on a more complete view of how trust is formed upstream before the purchase. 

Trust Inquiries are one means brands can assess trust formation within frontline interactions, and to identify moments within the customer journey in which trust is being obstructed or constructed. These kinds of tools are essential in collecting the feedback required to effectively develop and refine brand trust.

Trust Inquiries can take on many forms, including:

In Person Trust Inquiries - At Disney, they capture feedback through in person encounters in which they ask Guests where they are visiting from, or what a Guest thought of a specific ride or event. Immediate feedback about the quality, reliability, and safety of the Guest experience offers the opportunity to make short-term adjustments quickly or provide immediate service recovery, if necessary. 

Direct Consumer Trust Inquiries – Hilton actively surveys guests to understand what their guests don’t do before a stay as a means to discover pathways to creating brand trust. In a survey of luxury travelers Hilton found the value potential of concierges given the significant number of guests that leave details of their trip unplanned until they arrive at their hotel.  By learning more about their hotel guests, they are able to strategically form experiences that not only delight, but also create a lasting bond of trust.

Employee Trust Inquiries - Few people know and understand your customers better than your front-line team members who seek to form trust-based relationships every day. We’ve found that frontline staff tend to share what is working well, along with important areas of opportunity that allow for service experience enhancements.  Frontline team members also are the most attuned to how the brand is seen by others and the barriers preventing trust.  Ask your frontline team about customer trust and then listen without judgement.

Trade Partner Trust Inquiries –As Jan Carlson, President of Scandinavian Airlines noted “Any time a customer comes into contact with a business, however remote, they have an opportunity to form an impression.”  The partner organizations that work with you in the creation of your product or service often are overlooked in seeking feedback on trust.  Trade partners engage with your employees, other partner organizations, and directly with your customers and as a result they have a wealth of knowledge about how others see your trustworthiness.

Consider: What new or additional Trust Inquiries can your brand organize to safeguard you are not overlooking valuable feedback?

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, check out America’s Most Trusted, our brand research and insights program. Or, consider contacting us directly to learn how we can support your organization.

3 Simple Ways To Improve Customer Trust Today

Central to the success of any brand or company is capturing the trust of people.  We’d all like to think of ourselves as trustworthy, but trust must be established and not merely assumed.

Here are three simple things we have learned from our America’s Most Trusted® study you can do to embed trust building into your day-to-day business operations:

#1 Ask, Listen, and Learn

Listening is the key to effective trust building, and it can also raise your profitability.  Here are two ways to demonstrate to your customers that you are committed to establishing trust by listening to what they need and what is important to them.

Customer Interactions – Ask your customers what they are seeking to accomplish and how you can help. Demonstrate your need to understand them by taking notes and repeating back what they have said. Detect the words they use to describe and keenly observe their body language as they speak.  Seek to understand before trying to be understood. To establish trust, people need to believe that you see them as an individual with unique needs.  By asking questions and genuinely listening to them, you will create the opportunity to form trust.  Trust Inquiries are one means brands can use to assess trust formation within front line interactions, and to identify moments within the customer journey in which trust is being obstructed or constructed.

Seek Listening Opportunities – Establish a routine of finding ways of asking and listening to your customers.  In addition to face to face interactions, find the means to identify ways in which you can seek feedback from customers.   Customers who see a brand consistently acting toward their best interest will form the necessary groundwork in establishing trust.  For example, provide in person or follow up surveys that seek to understand what is essential to the customer and how your brand or product is living up to their expectations.  By seeking out opportunities to listen to your customer's thoughts and feelings you will not only discover new approaches and understanding of those you serve, you will also form the bonds of trust from which brand trust is dependent.

#2 Know what is expected

A central feature of creating trust is understanding the expectations people hold.  The question being asked by a customer is “can I trust this brand and their product?”  When customers feel confident in their expectations of a brand, they form trust.  Expectations can vary widely from one customer to the next, but often there will be a core set of expectations.  Among most products, quality and reliability are expectations customers hold.  Will your product do what it claims it will do and will it consistently perform?

Mapping customer expectations is an excellent approach to establishing trust-building practices.  Stand in the shoes of those you serve and identify what expectations do they hold.  Consider how these expectations may differ based on things such as decision stage.  What are expectations during shopping, purchasing, and using the product?  By understanding the expectations customers hold, you can evaluate if you are effectively communicating and achieving customer expectations.  When expectations are met, or exceeded, trust will follow.

#3 Look for ways to communicate trust

How your team members interact and communicate with your customers is central to establishing brand trust. A good management practice is to role-play everyday customer conversations to find ways to communicate trust.  Ask your team members to share actual customer encounters that occur every day.  Seek to encourage your staff to think of actual real conversations and not an abstraction of customer encounters.  By being specific, you can identify chances to form customer practices that are grounded in true experiences.

An effective approach to examining how trust is communicated in everyday customer interactions is to role play with your team.  Present different scenarios and together ask if you are effectively establishing trust. For example: In greeting customers how is trust communicated by you; When customers ask for help with a problem do they know they can trust you; When faced with disgruntled customers how do you reestablish trust; or how do you convey trust to customers you communicate with multiple times?

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, check out America’s Most Trusted, our brand research and insights program. Or, consider contacting us directly to learn how we can support your organization.

Are your customer's Advocates or Antagonists?

What can you learn from your brand ranking in America’s Most Trusted study?

Trust among those you serve is not uniform.  Some people will have a deep, committed level of trust, others will see their trust in your brand as undifferentiated, and then there will be a contingent that will not trust you. When assessing your brand trust, it is important to understand the different trust groups your customers fall into. America’s Most Trusted® uses a Net Trust score that is based on the fundamental perspective that every organization's customer can be divided into three categories: trust advocates, neutrals, and antagonists.

“Trust advocates” are customers that feel a significant trust toward a given brand. When someone is a trust advocate, he or she feels a personal connection with the brand.  They see the brand as reliable, honorable, and of course, trustworthy. Trust advocates go out of their way to share with others their confidence in a specific brand which they trust. Trust advocates see a premium value in the products and services offered by those brands they trust.  Brands such as Taylor Morrison, Trilogy, and Sotheby’s International Realty are real estate brands that have each demonstrated they have a significant contingent trust advocates among people searching for a new home, a new active adult community, or seeking the services of a residential broker.

“Neutrals” are customers that trust a specific brand, but they do not see that brand as standing on the shoulders of other brands regarding trust. This group of consumers sees little differentiation of a specific brand regarding how it compares to other similar brands rated on the dimension of trust. As a result, neutrals do not speak up and say anything about a brand based on their confidence and trust in a brand. Neutrals see the brand as a commodity in which the offering is of no greater or lesser value of others and is seen as easily interchangeable to other commoditized brands.

“Antagonists” are skeptics and have little, if any, trust in a brand. These people feel a negative sense toward brands given the distrust they have toward a brand. This distrust, in turn, fuels a need to share with other people their convictions that a specific brand cannot be trusted. Antagonists often will express negative emotional states about the brand and hold on to these feelings with strong conviction.

By segmenting brand trust into these different groups of customers, you can begin to understand better how your brand is seen.  Strong trust advocate brands are often characterized by a spiritual zeal and cooperation from their customers who seek to be associated with the brand. If your brand ranks below average, it is entirely possible for the majority of your customers to fall into the Neutral category, which doesn’t mean customers distrust you. Consider those who fall into the Neutral category as potential Advocates. Focus on moving these customers from Neutrals to Advocates by shaping positive perceptions of your brand in new, interesting ways.  Finally, even if you have a relatively small portion of antagonist among your customer base, it is important not only to understand how these people became antagonists, but it is of significant value to uncover ways to make amends with those who distrust your brand.

 Lifestory will be publishing the most recent results of the America’s Most Trusted ® study in January 2019.  In the most recent study, we rank the trust of brands in home building, kitchen appliances, heating and air conditioning systems, laundry appliances, residential brokerages, active adult resort builders, faucets, and household paints. In addition to these brand categories, the study this upcoming year will also include brands within the product verticals of windows, vacuums, mattress beds, computers, as well as other brand categories.

 This Article is About:

• How to build brand trust

• Building trust with customers

• Brand building with brand marketing research

• Brand reputation, reliability, and intention

• America’s Most Trusted brands

Brand Intentions

Building trust with customers

Brand intention is one of the key factors in assessing consumer trust, which is a key to the success of your brand. It is based on the consumer’s belief that the brand will hold the consumer’s interest in mind, especially in the event that a problem arises with the product.

Brand intention has become an incredibly challenging factor for many companies in today’s digital landscape. For a consumer to believe you have their interests in mind, a brand must be able to respond quickly and in a friendly, helpful tone. More and more consumers are communicating their grievances on social media channels, expecting brands will respond immediately and solve their problem. Do you know how your customers want to communicate with you? Do you know what it means to have their best interest in mind?

Did you know you can create a culture of intention within your company? As your best advocates, employees can help create ways for customers to feel like you have their best interest in mind and reinforce these messages throughout a consumer’s journey with your brand.

Brand intention goes a long way in building trust with your customers and future customers. So where do you stand? Lifestory Research’s, America’s Most Trusted study can tell you how well your customers trust you.  Contact Lifestory Research to find out where your brand’s trust quotient ranks against other like brands today or to learn more about America’s Most Trusted study click here.

 Years of research shows brands with high-trust are more profitable, see higher levels of customer satisfaction, have higher employee engagement, and more. Trusted brands influence customer choice and create loyalty; attract, retain, and motivate talent; and lower the cost of performing business.

Brand Reliability: Can I trust you?

Brand reliability is one of the key factors in assessing consumer trust, which is a key to the success of your brand. It is based on the consumer’s belief that the brand can accomplish its value promise. In its root form, reliability is the expectation that the brand will consistently perform as envisioned by the customer? 

Beliefs about brand reliability evolve similarly as how trust is formed in interpersonal relationships.  That is, trust grows in a newly formed relationship based on the consistent and predictable actions of the participants.  When people act in accordance to the expectations we hold of them, we come to trust them.  Likewise, when the products we use from a brand reliably perform, we come to trust the brand.

For brands invested in long-term relationships and recurring customer purchases, providing reliability is central to success.  People are not going to repurchase computers, laundry appliances, televisions, or vacuums from brands that have faulty and unreliable performance.  When a product works day in and day out, the customer comes to trust the brand.

But what happens when a customer has no history or direct experience with a brands product?  How do brand reliability beliefs get formed pre-purchase, pre-relationship, or pre-experience? As discussed in our post Reputation: An expectation of trust, people will often turn to others who have direct experience or knowledge to assess brand trust.  Brands with a positive word of mouth reputation will be at an immediate advantage since people forming reliability beliefs may come to be exposed to these brand advocates.

Brand managers will also turn to the world of advertising and marketing as a means to influence the creation of trust beliefs.  Advertising tends to fall into a few different categories when it comes to establishing brand trust.  One realm are those messages aimed at assuring future customers that they will be nothing less than satisfied with a product purchase because of quality features and design.  Maytag is a brand that consistently earned the trust of appliance shoppers by emphasizing the quality included in their products, originating with loneliest repairman advertisements begun in the 1960s and continued today with their face of reliability campaign.  

Another realm, and the far more emotive approach is transporting people into the brand itself by crafting persuasive campaigns that evoke the desire of people to be part of and affiliated to a brand.  The success of these campaigns is grounded in understanding the needs of the audience through influence profiling.  Brand campaigns often are concerned with expressing the character and values by which the brand operates. In this regard, these advertisements communicate that people can trust the brand because it will consistently live the brand tenants they espouse.  In other words, the brand can be counted on and reliable because the company stands behind the brand values.  Every Trane is Tested To Be Unstoppable is an example of using advertisements to establish brand trust through messages of reliability. (Trane has received America's Most Trusted HVAC System four years in row).

Do you know if your brand is seen as reliable by your target audience?  What messages and features are critical in forming trust with those you serve?  Will your advertising campaign resonate with people and build perceptions of trust and dependability? Among those people that know of your brand, or have used your products, do they trust your?

 To identify America’s Most Trusted®, Lifestory Research conducts the most extensive survey in America in which people anonymously assess the trust they have in brands they encounter during their active search for specific products. In the most recent study, we rank the trust of brands in home building, kitchen appliances, heating and air conditioning systems, laundry appliances, residential brokerages, active adult resort builders, faucets, and household paints. Lifestory will be publishing the most recent results of the America’s Most Trusted study in January 2019.  In addition to the brand categories noted above, the study has been expanded to include the trust of brands in computers, televisions, vacuum cleaners, window glass, bedroom mattresses, as well as other brand categories.

 Years of research shows brands with high-trust are more profitable, see higher levels of customer satisfaction, have higher employee engagement, and more. Trusted brands influence customer choice and create loyalty; attract, retain, and motivate talent; and lower the cost of performing business.

Contact Lifestory Research to find out where your brand’s trust quotient ranks against other like brands today or to learn more about America’s Most Trusted study click here.

Reputation: An expectation of trust

Do you know how your customers perceive you?

The reputation of a brand is a building block in gaining customer trust.  As noted in our post on How do you build brand trust, brand reputation is one of three elements essential in trust management.  Reputation is the trustworthiness, integrity, and honesty people hold toward the brand; it is the expectation of your character and actions.  Your brand reputation lives in the minds of those you serve, and those you hope to serve, as noted by Seth Godin  “Reputation is what people expect us to do next.”

The importance of reputation is demonstrated by several prominent studies and rankings that search for the best and worst of brands: Fortune’s “Most Admired” list, Interbrand’s “Best Global Brands” ranking, and the Reputation Institute’s Global RepTrak 100. These well-known rankings are evidence that brands with solid reputations have financial and competitive advantages as well as retain greater stability.

Brand reputation is one of three factors that affect trust in a brand. Brands with high-trust are more profitable, see higher levels of customer satisfaction, have higher employee engagement, and more. Trusted brands influence customer choice and create loyalty; attract, retain, and motivate talent; and lower the cost of performing business.

Consumers acquire perceptions about a brand over time, forming either positive or negative associations of the brand from their own experiences with the brand, as well as what they have heard from other people. As this indicates, your brand reputation already exists in the minds of those you seek to influence.  Often brand managers believe that the marketing messages or brand positions they have crafted are what sits in the minds of their audience.  However, in the case of reputation, these are perceptions people already hold about the brand, and often these perceptions have been formed in the absence of brand management.

One realm in which brand reputation lives is social media, where people view and seek out the opinions of others. With social media, consumers can react to an experience immediately, often impulsively. The impact can be devastating for a brand. Take the airline industry, for example. Passengers post pictures or videos that go viral and become a media frenzy that cost the airlines time and money to handle. However, it is their reputation that takes the biggest hit. It can take years to build your reputation but can take only a minute to destroy it. We have witnessed this happen to many successful people and brands over the years, reminding us that we do not have complete control of our reputation.

 When someone is deciding to purchase a brand product, he or she will seek out information to reduce uncertainty about the decision.  When searching for information, the potential customer is scanning the environment to determine the level and type of risks they should be aware of as they consider a product purchase.  It is here, at the intersection of what people believe about a brand and what they learn from others, that brand reputation is formed.  Want to know if customers will trust you?  Go to these brand intersections to understand not only what other people think of your brand, but what is most important to the customer when they are determining reputation.

 Do you know if you have a poor or excellent reputation? If not, do an inventory of your brand. What are people saying about you? What kind of reviews do customers give you? What impact does your brand reputation have on the trust people have in your product or service?  As a starting point, take a few minutes to see how brands in different product categories performed in our 2018 America’s Most Trusted study in which we rank the trust of brands in home building, kitchen appliances, heating and air conditioning systems, laundry appliances, residential brokerages, active adult resort builders, faucets, and household paints. If you are a brand operating in one of these categories, or a brand interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the trust held by your customers, reach out to Lifestory Research to discover how customers rate your reputation and what, if anything, you need to do to improve perceptions.

 Lifestory will be publishing the most recent results of the America’s Most Trusted study in January 2019.  In addition to the brand categories noted above, the study this upcoming year will also include brands within the product verticals of windows, vacuums, mattress beds, computers, as well as other brand categories.

This Article is About:

• How to build brand trust

• Building brand reputation with customers

• Customer trust marketing research

• America’s Most Trusted brands

How do you build brand trust?

Lifestory Research conducts the most extensive survey on brand trust in their annual America’s Most Trusted study. Each year, with feedback from over 30,000, people assess their trust in certain brands they encounter during their active search for specific products.  Back in 2012, we were at a crisis of trust in America. At that time, Edelman’s Trust Barometer Annual Global Study, showed only 50 percent of American’s trust businesses to do what is right. In 2018, the same study posts the steepest, most dramatic general population decline the Trust Barometer has ever measured for the United States: The crisis is worse today.

 In today’s marketplace, trust is everything. For more than four decades, the General Social Survey (GSS) has found a steady decline in Americans agreeing “that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people.”  Today, with only 1 in 5 people saying they trust others, the trust in brands is also at risk. More than any other factor, trust can reduce costs, improve productivity, enhance innovation, improve collaboration, and increase value. Without trust, barriers go up, value goes down, and relationships do not advance. Consumers desire and seek out companies that they have trust in.

 So how do you build trust in your brand?

 Based on our research, three overarching factors affect trust in a brand: brand reputation, brand reliability, and brand intention. However, core to these factors is a deep understanding of your consumer. How well do you know the people who buy your products? As you read about the three factors that affect trust in a brand, put yourself in the position of the consumer and picture what he or she might be doing and thinking as it relates to these three levers of trust.

 1.      Brand reputation is the trustworthiness, integrity, and honesty people hold toward a company. Brand reputation is built over time and through various experiences a consumer has with you. An experience can be anything from seeing an advertisement, reading reviews, talking to customer service to using your product. Anytime a consumer hears about you, or from you, or sees your name or logo, they are experiencing your brand. Do you know how they are experiencing your brand? Do you know how they view your brand? And do you know who influences them?

 2.      Brand reliability is the consumer’s belief that the brand can accomplish its value promise. That is, the brand fulfills or satisfies the consumer’s needs. Brand reliability does not have to be a direct experience with a consumer; it can be established through word of mouth. The expectations you set for consumers must, at the very least, be met. You have to be credible in the mind of the consumer. Do your customers believe in the quality of your product? Do they believe you do what you say you will do?

 3.      Brand intention is based on the consumer’s belief that the brand will hold the consumer’s interest in mind, especially if a problem arises with the product. Brand intention has become an incredibly challenging factor for many companies in today’s digital landscape. For a consumer to believe you have their interests in mind, a brand must be able to respond quickly and in a friendly, helpful tone. More and more consumers are communicating their grievances on social media channels, expecting brands will respond immediately and solve their problem. Do you know how your customers want to communicate with you? Do you know what it means to have their best interest in mind?

 Focusing in these three areas is essential whether your customers have a high or low level of trust in your brand. A high level of trust is a luxury that needs protection if you want to sustain it. If you need to improve customer trust, don’t panic. Consumers may not have enough information to have a high level of trust, but you need to find out what is really happening if you want to make improvements.  Lifestory is here to help. We can zero in on areas of vulnerability, then determine a path toward higher levels of trust, or if you already have a high level of trust, we can help keep those levels healthy.

Coming up on its eighth year, Lifestory will be publishing the most recent results of the study in January 2019.  This year the study has asked consumers their level of trust in brands in several product classifications.  The study continues to measure consumer trust for home builder brands, laundry appliance brands, faucet brands, paint brands, dishwasher appliance brands, residential brokerage brands, refrigerator appliance brands, HVAC brands, and active adult resort builder brands.  New product classes in the study include window brands, vacuum brands, bed mattress brands, computer brands, and other brand categories.

Click here to learn more about the study.

This Article is About:

• How to build brand trust

• Building trust with customers

• Brand building with brand marketing research

• Brand reputation, reliability, and intention

• America’s Most Trusted brands

THE AMERICAN DREAM: A STATE OF MIND

In the last decade, American attitudes have undergone a shift brought on by a country that has faced significant change. Ten years ago the economy was quickly accelerating and producing a broad array of opportunities. The American Dream was alive and well with homeownership at an all-time high, the economy producing abundant jobs, and a force of people feeling that they had either achieved the dream, or were on their way to achieving it. Then the world was tilted on its side when the greatest economic event in more than 75 years unfolded, immediately throwing hundreds of thousands of people out of work and out of their homes. These historical occurrences have altered our nation’s cultural and social views and called into question one of the most fundamental beliefs – that in America if you work hard you have the potential to earn a good living, own a home, and care for your family both emotionally and financially.

After traversing the country interviewing in person more than 200 people, and then conducting a survey among a nationally representative sample of 1400 people, Lifestory Research reaches new conclusions about the condition and achievement of the American Dream.  “Our research on the American Dream found two major findings,” said Eric Snider, President and Chief Research Officer of Lifestory Research. “First, the American Dream is no longer defined as the accumulation of wealth and possessions. Instead, we found that the most important feature defining the American Dream today is the ability to achieve a happy and healthy mental life. Second, we found that happiness in life is in part based on the achievement of certain facets of the American Dream.”

Detailed information about the study can be found here.

Our Story

Lifestory’s approach to consumer research

When you call your company Lifestory, it always results in people telling you their personal story. We are a scientific research company, but we know that meaning, as that found in stories, is the root of all discoveries. Consumers find meaning in many ways, but it is this element that results in the greatest insight that we portray. So, it only makes sense that we begin here with our own story.

Lifestory Research was formed with a single focal point – we want to provide the highest quality consumer research available in the market. As with any consumer research firm we are experts in the application of a myriad of research methods including survey research, focus groups, biometric research, and observational research. In performing these research methods we also have advanced degrees in the statistical sciences. You can certainly say we know how to crunch numbers from all forms of multivariate statistical analysis to the most current approaches including things like conjoint analysis.

Headquartered in Newport Beach, Calif., Lifestory Research is a custom marketing research firm, dedicated to helping clients evaluate their brand and strengthen their understanding of their customers. The Lifestory Research team has designed and executed qualitative, quantitative and observational solutions while adhering to a client-focused ethic built on being easy to work with and delivering best-in-class insight. The company’s core competency is measuring attitudes and behaviors to accurately explain and predict bottom line impact of a client’s actions. Offerings include market entry studies, segmentation studies, product development studies, branding studies, customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction research, pricing strategy and advertising studies. Lifestory’s client base spans private education, real estate, energy, financial services, medical providers and not-for-profit organizations.

Our work covers many different realms, but a central feature of our work in on the subject of social influence. We are experts in the scientific inquiry of persuasion. When you tell this to people they often assume that we are concerned with attitude change in the context of sales in business environments. We do perform a portion of our assignments examining how sales associates employ different communication strategies with the goal of persuading a potential customer. But, we also examine the act of influence in many other realms including organizational research, energy consumption, prevention programs, product design, leadership, advertising, and marketing communications. We have a passion to help our clients gain an understanding of the dynamics of persuasive communication. In addition, we find some of our greatest reward in teaching others how to execute timeless psychological principles as to how to change the thinking or behavior of other people.

We welcome the chance to hear your story and to become part of it.