e-BrandsFace Trust Shuffle: Brand Trust Report

Hyderabad/Mumbai. March 12, 2015: For the fifth consecutive year, Google, the American multinational specializing in internet-related services and products has been declared the Most Trusted Internet Brand by The Brand Trust Report, India Study, 2015.Amazon, the online shopping portal, saw a new appearance in the 2015 trust rankings coming in at 146th rank overall and 2nd rank in the Internet category. Snapdeal grabbed the third position in the Internet category jumping 917 ranks to 174thrank across India. The online shopping portals increasing popularity indicate a rising usage of online shopping as a definitive medium of shopping, given its convenience and cost advantages. Flipkartrosenearly 900 ranks to overall rank 212nd. This rising popularity however does not manifest in other internet related categories - a startling example being the social networking website Facebook, which sees a decline of 12 ranks in 2015.

These revelations were a result of The Brand Trust Report, India Study - 2015, the fifth in its series, published by TRA (formerly known as Trust Research Advisory), a leading research organization dedicated to brand analytics. This year’s study involved 13000 hours of fieldwork covering 2373 consumer-influencers across 16 cities in India and generated 5 million datapoints and 19,000 unique brands from which the top 1000 brands have been listed in this year’s report. The 190 page, hardbound report is available for Rs. 14000. 

Commenting on this sudden flurry of activity in the internet category, N. Chandramouli, CEO, TRA stated, “The medium of internet is completely disruptive and it not surprising that the e-brands see upheavals in trust also. Something new is happening all the time and engaging consumers has never been so challenging as well as exciting before this. Internet brands today need to be very careful given that there are online conversations happening beyond the knowledge and control of the brand. There is always something new happening. This year there are some new entrants to the trust list in the internet category such as RedBus.in in Online bus booking, Zivame in Online lingerie store and Hopscotch.in in Online baby products.” 

Notable mention is the 592 rank fall that is seen by Yahoo, a brand once the closest competition to Google. Wechat and Line, social networking apps too have not made an impact while the only surviving brand in the category WhatsApp falls by 200 ranks. Social media platform Twitter is a no-show in this year’s listings.

It is interesting to note that of the 31 brands listed in Internet category in 2014 only 13 brands have been able to make it to the top 1000. Also an additional 7 new entrants in the category draw up the total number to 20 internet brands, moving away from the trend of the growth of Internet related brands each year.