The latest Roy Morgan Net Trust rankings for the 12 months to September 2022 continue to show retailers holding the top spots with all five of the most trusted brands being retailers.
The top five most trusted brands have remained unchanged for four straight quarters, with Woolworths, Coles, Bunnings Warehouse, ALDI and Kmart coming out on top.
Roy Morgan data scientists analysed nominations from more than 22,000 Australians to identify the nation’s 20 most trusted brands, and 20 most distrusted brands.
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine said Australia’s leading supermarkets and big retailers have maintained their rankings as Australia’s most trusted brands during the September quarter despite continuing inflation and cost of living concerns and successive RBA interest rate hikes.
“The latest Roy Morgan Net Trust rankings for the year to September 2022 show the impact of the long-running retail boom continuing – although there are emerging signs that next year will finally bring an end to the retail spending binge, at least for some sections of the community,” Levine said.
“The top five most trusted brands in the year to September 2022 were all leading retail brands that have now held the top five positions for four quarters in a row – Woolworths, Coles, Bunnings Warehouse, ALDI and Kmart.
“Outside the top five the big winners were smartphone market leader Apple and a suite of well-known retail brands including department store Myer and discount department store Big W – which all increased their rankings in the top ten most trusted brands.
“The leading brands have managed to leverage their trust during the pandemic, a reputation built on the key pillars of reliability, high levels of service and the quality merchandise that consumers expect, to maintain high levels of trust throughout the last two years.
“However, there are several brands dealing with rising distrust, including Harvey Norman, Shell, TikTok and Pfizer which are all in the top 20 most distrusted brands whereas consistently strong performers such as Qantas and ABC have lost ground with rising distrust – although both are still ranked highly overall.”
The Roy Morgan analysis also reveals the top 20 list of Australia’s most distrusted brands with Harvey Norman entering the top 5 most distrusted brands for the first time, with lingering high levels of distrust stemming from the 2020 JobKeeper scandal proving stubbornly persistent for the retailer.
Despite occurring too late to be recorded in the September data, early insights suggest the Optus data breach on 22 September 2022 has had a profound impact on Australian’s distrust of Australia’s second largest telco, which will be reflected from October 2022 onwards.