More than half (55%) of consumers do not trust brands with their personal information, according to a new Optimove 2023 Consumer Trust of Retailers Survey.
Managing customer data properly should be among the top priorities for organizations. If done wrong, customers will soon notice and move their business elsewhere.
When it comes to customer fears regarding data misuse, 49% of respondents said that their top fear is their "financial information being stolen." Further, 33% of consumers said their biggest fear is "having their identity stolen." Results revealed that respondents think trust between brands and consumers is in decline overall with the following results: getting worse (41%), staying the same (35%), and improving (24%).
"Trust and loyalty are inextricably linked. For consumers, if trust is broken by misuse of personal information, marketers rarely get a second chance. While consumers often choose an online retailer based on price, they will leave because of a marketer's service miscues. It means that once a customer engages with a brand, the marketer must make the customer experience stellar by listening to and responding to customer needs and desires," said Pini Yakuel, CEO & Founder of Optimove.
Interestingly, 64% of consumers shop at brands they do not trust, and 32% of them shop at an online brand they do not trust on a daily basis, followed by 32% who said they shop at brands they do not trust but "try to avoid them."
To win consumers' trust, 56% of respondents said brands should "have a policy that the marketer will not share personal information." The second most important action in winning consumers' trust was "asking for permission to offer suggestions," as reported by 31% of consumers.Finally, 82% of respondents said it is "extremely or very important" that they are "in control of the personal information they share with online brands."
Yakuel added that consumers are human and can be illogical, saying:
"More than six in ten consumers shop at brands they don't trust. It shows that price and convenience may be worth the 'risk' for a shopper. They will not necessarily switch when the brand has delivered on time with the right products – especially for commodities."
Other survey findings worth mentioning include the following:
- Top action brands can take to build trust: a policy that personal information will not be shared, selected by 56% of respondents
- Email is the preferred channel by consumers for sharing personal information, selected by 67% of consumers surveyed
- Personal information consumers feel safest about sharing: email (53%), gender (52%), age (49%)
- Marketers who send excessive or irrelevant offers to consumers are trusted less: 46% said they trust a marketer less; just 19% trust a marketer more.
