Our Account Director for the Financial Services sector, Barry Clark, shares some thoughts on the question of trust…

Ever since 2008, British banks have been talking about how they can regain trust among consumers. They are not alone. Consumer trust in corporations is in decline and the Leveson Enquiry’s painful ongoing progress only serves to remind British citizens of the unprincipled, unscrupulous and unlawful behaviour of some businesses. Trust is at a premium.

But we wonder just how important trust is.

Consider this: our own research shows that significantly more consumers trust British Airways than budget operator easyJet. Yet easyJet carries more passengers each year than BA. And this is in a market where trust matters. You are, after all, inserting your frail human frame into a pressurised aluminium tube travelling six miles above the surface of the Earth at eight-tenths the speed of sound. If trust matters in any market it matters in airlines.

We’re not saying that trust isn’t important. Rather, our view is that trust is a consideration along with price, value and quality.

Most people wouldn’t trust an estate agent and yet the majority of us choose to employ their services.

Part of the problem is that trust is often talked of as a single, monolithic, entity. For most consumers trust is a complex, multi-layered concept, coloured in shades of grey. Only great brands, offering great service are truly and properly trusted. High-quality service engenders trust.

Trust also happens in the moment. In the moment when we manipulate the mouse over the ‘click to buy’ button. In the moment that we are in the showroom. In the moment when we are test-driving a car. At the point of purchase, previous – rather abstract – notions of trust can be disregarded as price and value tip the purchase decision. Who wouldn’t want to fly to Bergamo for £49? Why wouldn’t you take the chance on an unfamiliar brand if it offered conspicuous value?

We posit that trust is a factor in the purchase decision but it’s not a pre-requisite and neither is it the most important consideration. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Photo: (Creative Commons) DrewbieDoo

We've talked in a previous blog-post about the "Brand Match" scheme from Sainsbury's, wondering if the current culture of price comparison will soon give way to a situation where companies carry out the hard work on our behalves and then proactively demonstrate the better value that they represent.

In this context, we note with interest the recent advertising activity from EDF Energy for its "Blue +Price Promise". Under the initiative, EDF says it will tell its customers if any of its competitors are offering better tariffs and that it won't charge them if they then wish to change suppliers accordingly. On its website, EDF thus offers a guarantee that “From the moment you complete your move to Blue +Price Promise, we'll let you know if a competitor or EDF Energy launches a product that's more than £1 cheaper per week”.

Should EDF find itself being out-priced, it claims that customers will receive letters or emails within 10 days of it learning about the more competitive option. And to give the process an air of transparency and impartiality, prices are monitored by PricewaterhouseCoopers (so that customers “don’t just have to take our word for it").

With the company also guaranteeing that its current prices will be maintained until 2013, that customers will receive monthly rewards as part of its “Thank yous” scheme and that the electricity it supplies comes from “low-carbon generation”, it seems clear that our Transparency, Demanding Consumers and Maximising Behaviour trends have lost none of their potency in the early 10s.

But this is a development which also speaks very strongly to our emerging End of Inefficiency trend - which suggests that, at least in relatively low-interest sectors, consumers may soon find themselves willing to hand over a degree of control to third-party systems guaranteed to find them the best deals. Does EDF's scheme show, then, how brands might be able to interrupt this trend by championing their own efficiency? And does it give further proof that we're heading towards "Price Comparison 2.0", where the impetus falls on brands rather than consumers? We'd love to hear your thoughts.

In March, Domino’s Pizza joined the growing list of brands using price gamification tactics in order to drive consumer interest  -  holding what it called a  “Tweet Treat” initiative at its Lincoln branch which saw the price of its pepperoni pizza falling as more and more people “Tweeted” about it on social networks.

Running between 9am and 11am on March 5th, the offer was, so the brand said, an attempt to reward customers and increase lunchtime orders - with Twitter and Facebook members being invited to use a “#LetsDoLunch” hashtag in order to influence the final price. Those who chose to participate were then able to purchase the pizza through the Domino’s website once the "reverse auction" had closed.

At the start of April, Domino's ran a similar initiative at its Milton Keynes branch, with prices for five large pizzas falling by at least a penny each time a relevant hashtag was posted (to a minimum of £6.50 per pizza - with the final price in this instance being £6.98). And it says it has plans take the Tweet Treat proposition to other outlets across the country in the coming weeks.

From Uniqlo to Innocent, Gap to Swedish supermarket ICA Vanadis, examples of retailers adopting a more playful approach to RRP are very quickly multiplying in number. Can we thus imagine a not-too-distant future where real-time sales monitoring and continuously adjusted price display support increasingly personalised deals? Will playful and game-like interactions be used more frequently to engage, entertain and create closer bonds with consumers in conventional retail spaces as well as online and on mobile platforms? We'd love to hear your thoughts.

In March, the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) announced plans to open a chain of Even Hotels – which it describes as mid-range venues with a clear focus on health and wellbeing.

According to IHG, the hotels are being designed to offer a Zen atmosphere in all areas – with plants and skylights in the lounge, LED mood lighting in the rooms and a gym which will boast an outdoor feel. Guests will also be encouraged to maintain a healthy lifestyle at all times, with each hotel providing nutritionally designed menus and services as well as multifunctional room amenities for fitness (for example, the coat rack will also be a pull-up bar and the luggage shelf will double as a weight bench).

Developed, IHG said, in response to its own research which showed that 1 in 4 travellers want hotels which accommodate their healthy lifestyles, the company claimed Even Hotels will be “fulfilling the so far unmet demand for healthier travel”. A sign of things to come in the hospitality sector? Or something that will always be a niche proposition? We’d love to hear your thoughts.