For over two decades, the Edelman Trust Barometer has detected and documented some of the largest shifts in opinion that are shaping the world. As trust emerged as a critical metric, a crucial question remained: How can individual brands, corporations, and organizations measure and successfully manage trust as a strategic asset?
Edelman initiated a comprehensive effort in partnership with academics and business leaders to augment the science of trust on a global scale. This process resulted in considerable progress in our understanding of what makes trust such a powerful asset for organizations, as well as how to measure it accurately and demonstrate the value it brings.
We found trust to be a dynamic reflection of how much strategic audiences trust a company or brand — impacting its license to operate, its business success, and its resilience in the face of adverse events. Trust is a bet that stakeholders make, believing that an organization will deliver against positive expectations.
Our research has proven that trust’s future-facing nature is particularly powerful. Traditional brand health dashboards often rely on sentiment and reputation as measurable metrics for success. Sentiment captures an individual's feelings toward a brand at specific moments or touchpoints. Reputation, by comparison, reflects collective perceptions held by a group of individuals, irrespective of their personal experiences. Trust, however, represents a deep-seated core belief or affinity held by individuals with a personal relationship with the brand. Because of its future-oriented nature and the powerful combination of both emotional and rational considerations, trust allows businesses to withstand risk, exhibit resilience during crises, and unlock their full potential across all stakeholder audiences.
Trust is more than just a performance indicator. When diagnosed and leveraged correctly, it is conditioning the future success of organizations that strive to forge lasting relationships with customers, partners, and stakeholders, and position themselves for sustained growth in a competitive landscape.
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