Optus, Facebook, Qantas ‘most distrusted’ brands
Telecoms and social media dominate the list of our least favourite companies, Roy Morgan survey reveals.
Telecom and social media companies head up the list of our most distrusted brands although Qantas leapt up the chart nine places to pip News Corp for the fourth spot, this year’s Roy Morgan survey reveals.
With Oputs cementing its place at number one after the network outage in November, the podium places were unchanged from last year with Facebook, or Meta, in second and Telstra taking third.
Medibank, Amazon, Twitter/X, Tik Tok and Harvey Norman made up the lower rungs of the top 10 most distrusted, with X the sole worse performer compared to last year.
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine said the flow-on effects from the Optus outage at Optus were a salutary reminder that dealing with distrust should be on the risk register of every board.
“Risk assessments and procedures by executives and company directors across all industries need to formally factor in distrust,” she said.
“Distrusted brands have felt the negative consequences of taking ‘business as usual’ for granted. These brands have been directly impacted by lax standards and not guarding properly against the potential for mistakes and errors to quickly metastasise into brand-defining events that destroy company value built up over many years in an instant.”
Ms Levine said distrust in organisations and brands had grown disproportionately over the past year and Australia was heading further into “net distrust” territory.
“As cost-of-living pressures deepen, this trend only gets worse as much of corporate Australia, from banks and airlines to supermarkets and utilities, are viewed by some as greedy and profiteering; Australians feel their wallets are shrinking while companies and executives are getting richer.”
At the other end of the scale, the most trusted brands shuffled spots two and three, with Bunnings overtaking Coles as the second most trusted brand, breaking the “supermarket duopoly” at the top of the tree.
It part-restored Bunnings’ pre-pandemic era form as number one until it was overtaken by Woolworths in 2020.
“Bunnings has harnessed many of the foundational pillars of a trusted brand including great customer service, communicating what it stands for and delivering, being an active part of the community, solving customer’s problems and expertise and product knowledge,” said Ms Levine.
She said Bunnings could return to the top spot in 2024.
“They do what they say, provide a huge range of competitive-priced products, and complaints or returns are handled fairly and promptly.”
“They are no frills, and always provide down-to-earth advice. They price products reasonably and have a great range. Their staff really seem to care about customers.”
Trust in Bunnings was highest among people over 35 – those most likely to be homeowners or paying off a home.
“As many Australians face rising cost of living pressures driven by high inflation, and a record-setting series of interest rate increases, the reputation Bunnings has built over many years is paying off.
“Many other prominent retailers are dealing with perceptions that they are price-gouging and taking advantage of the current environment to raise their prices above the rate of inflation – but these issues are having only a minimal impact on Australia’s favourite hardware chain.”
The most trusted brands are still dominated by major retailers, with Woolworths (1st), Coles (3rd), Aldi (4th) and Kmart (5th).
Myer and Toyota were two other leading brands to improve their positions in the top 10, with department store Myer boosting its ranking to seventh overall while Toyota moved up two places to eighth.
Other brands to improve their rankings as some of the most trusted brands in Australia include NRMA, up two places to 11th overall, the ABC, up three places to 15th overall and ING, up one place to 18th.
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