For the second year in a row, Mountain Equipment Co-op has topped the University of Victoria’s Gustavson School of Business’s annual Brand Trust Index.
The index, which gauges brands most trusted by Canadians, also welcomes two new companies to its top-10 list, with Canadian Automobile Association ranked the second most trusted and Cirque du Soleil entering the list at No. 9.
David Dunne, professor of international marketing at Gustavson, said the index measures brand trust by looking at three types of trust:
• Functional trust, or how a brand delivers on its promise.
• Relationship trust, based on how it treats the customer.
• Values-based trust, gauged by how the brand aligns with a customer’s own values and priorities.
“MEC does really well on all three of those,” said Dunne, noting the companies in the top-10 have spent decades to build relationships with customers.
But all that work can be snatched away quickly, he said. “Trust is a bit like a forest. It takes decades to grow and a fire can burn it down in an instant.”
The bottom of the trust index has plenty of examples of that.
At the bottom of the list, in 294th place, is Volkswagen, with United Airlines new to the list at No. 286 and Samsung falling from 15th position last year to 219th.
“It takes a long time to regain trust, and you see that with VW,” he said. “It’s the second year in a row at the very bottom of the rankings. Their brand hasn’t recovered the trust from the big [emission tests] fiasco they had in 2015.”
Dunne said Samsung’s ranking, which dropped to 219, has faltered as a result of the problems with the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone.
Dunne said if the survey had been done now, there’s a chance United Airlines could take over bottom spot. The airline was in a whirlwind of controversy after a bumped passenger was dragged off a plane. “The survey was done in March before all the stuff that has been happening with United. If we re-did the survey now, United may set new records,” Dunne said.
Other big drops were Dairy Queen which went from 77 in 2016 to 199 this year; Budweiser, which dropped to 223 from 103; and Subway, which went from 91 to 189.
“Trust plays a vital role in our community, economy and collective mindset as Canadians,” said Saul Klein, dean of the Gustavson School of Business. “We have witnessed several breakdowns in trust over the past year, which we see reflected in our results. It is clear that trust can erode very rapidly, but it takes a long time to build or to recover from mis-steps.”
The index is designed to show how community engagement, relationship management and customer experience influence consumer trust.
A goal in creating the index is to raise awareness of the role trust plays in the minds of consumers when making purchasing decisions.
The index uses responses from 6,560 consumers to score 294 companies and brands. It measures the performance of brands and companies in 26 industry sectors on a range of brand value measures.
TRUSTED BRANDS
Canada's top 10 most-trusted brands for 2017 (Rank in 2016)
1. MEC (1)
2. Canadian Automobile Association (new)
3. Costco Wholesale (3)
4. Fairmont Hotels & Resorts (8)
5. IKEA (22)
6. Chapters/Indigo (59)
7. President’s Choice (1)
8. Interac (11)
9. Cirque du Soleil (new)
10. WestJet (54)
