Edelman Trust Barometer 2015: Trust in businesses, government and media rises in India

With the 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer, the firm has launched its annual trust and credibility survey conducted across over 25 countries.

 

In the survey, for India, businesses emerged the most trusted at 84 per cent but government showed the biggest jump from last year going from 53 per cent to 82 per cent. NGOs dipped marginally from 75 per cent to 74 per cent.

 

Globally, India reflects as the second most trusted nation. 

 

Campaign India spoke with Rakesh Thukral, managing director, Edelman India to understand the findings.

 

What does this hold for India?

The Trust Barometer examines trust in four key institutions of our society which are businesses, media, hovernment and NGOs. 

 

For communication professionals, it provides a trend-setting benchmark to provide a level of analysis, research and evidence on what makes institutions trustworthy. 

 

For India, it captures the mood in the country right now. There is a lot of anticipation and a lot of expectations from the government. It captures that in the fact that the trust has jumped from 53 per cent to 82 per cent in the past year.

 

India comes out as the second most trusted nation, which speaks of the current mood in the country. People are hopeful that things will work out.

 

 

While the Indian population is very trusting in nature, the Indian businesses gather less of a trust in markets outside of India. Such companies have a job to do in terms of brand building, being sought after as partners etc. 

 

Trust in traditional media continues to be high. But like everything else there is dichotomy in the sense that Indians are intensly consuming the online media. While the trust in traditional media remains the highest, the trust in online media and search has also gone up. 

 

This tells us that there is a lot more of digital consumption of media happening. Also, while people get their news from TV and other traditional sources, they go online to validate the information.   

 

What are the expectations from businesses?

 

People want companies to play a role in society development and not just make profits. 

 

Whichever organisation and/or company people interact with, they think the products and services are a given. If you're doing a product and service offering in a good way then that is the basic. People want more transparency, engagement and integrity in the businesses being conducted.  

 

It is about how you engage with people and how responsive you are. They are all softer attributes but are very important.

 

How is media looked at?

 

The news that media is presenting to people seems to be trusted by the people highly. Some media they trust in a certain manner, but they continue to go online, to TV and print for different types of news and different purposes. 

 

In addition to media, people are relying a lot on content created by friend and family.