Trust matters to your company’s bottom line over both the short and long terms. There’s massive upside for brands that get it right.
But beware: Brands that violate trust both miss that benefit and lose customers and revenues—creating, in essence, a potential double-downside.
Our research shows that among consumers who track their purchases, more than two- thirds (68%) spent more money in 2021 on trusted brands than on brands they don’t trust. Consumers spend 25% more money on trusted brands.
That’s just the top-line impact that trust creates. Deloitte’s prior research on trust signals showed numerous other impacts from enhanced trust. Customers are 2.4x more likely to stick with a brand that shows humanity after a mistake.
Trust also helps you earn permission to collect more and more valuable data from customers—enabling your brand to foster deeper bonds with customers through insights. In fact, consumers are okay with favorite brands having significantly more data about them than they think the brands already know.
Increased sales and loyalty, louder advocacy, willingness to forgive mistakes and provide personal data: Those are intangible assets that money can’t buy, but that are among the most valuable for the long-term growth of your business. And as the world becomes more digital and the voices of your customers gain new platforms for amplification, the value of trust will only grow.
Conversely, when trust is broken, the consequences are greater than leaders recognize.
53% of consumers said they stopped purchasing from a brand after a loss of trust in the past year, but only 39% of leaders said customers would stop purchasing from their company brand due to a loss of trust.
Similarly, 44% of consumers said they told friends and family about a loss of trust in a brand in the past year. But only 34% of business leaders said they believed their customers would do that.
Loss of trust is never a neutral event. Instead of growing sales, loyalty and word-of-mouth through greater trust, brands that break trust are actively eroding those key drivers of success.
1 in 5 consumers spend upward of 50% more money on trusted brands.
