Roy Morgan announced the winners of the Trusted Brand Awards for 2024. These brands have had an exceptional year by garnering high levels of trust, and low, or negligible, levels of distrust throughout the year.
The ultimate winner of Roy Morgan’s 'Best of the Best' Most Trusted Brand award is Bunnings, achieving this recognition for the first time. Consistently ranked among the top three Most Trusted Brands in recent years, Bunnings has maintained high levels of trust even as other formerly trusted brands experienced significant declines in their rankings.
All 20 of the winning brands have demonstrated their market leading performance by emerging ahead of all competitors in their respective categories across a diverse array of industries and services. Categories include Supermarkets, Retail, Department and Discount Stores, Charities, Automotive, Superannuation, Insurance, Utilities, Government Services, Media, Pharmaceuticals, Banking, Telecommunications, and more.
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine says “The last few years have provided plenty of ‘trials and tribulations’ for Australians with the unprecedented pandemic (2020-21) quickly followed by a period of soaring inflation and rising interest rates (2022-2023)– which remain at 13-year highs.
“The intricately related, but vastly different issues, thrown up by these two distinct periods have produced many ‘winners’, and ‘losers’ – and not always the same brands for both periods – and trust, and distrust, in leading businesses and brands has waxed and waned over the last four years.
“There were some businesses that outperformed expectations during the pandemic, most notably our most well-known supermarkets, and have since plunged in public esteem as questions about record profits and alleged ‘greedy’ behaviour has seen their trust levels plummet, and distrust soar.
“These examples show that it takes a special type of business to nimbly negotiate very different circumstances and this year’s ‘Best of the Best’ Most Trusted Brand Award winner Bunnings has certainly proven nimble and ready for any challenge that arises.
“Bunnings has been firmly ensconced in Australia’s top three most trusted brands throughout this period and as others have fallen has emerged as a clear winner of Roy Morgan’s ‘Best of the Best Most Trusted Brand’ in Australia over the last 12 months.
“To counter any potential allegations of ‘greedy corporate behaviour’ one of the most successful policies Bunnings has is their long-running policy on providing the lowest prices with their famous advertising line ‘If you happen to find a cheaper price on a stocked item, we’ll beat it by 10%…. Lowest prices are just the beginning.’
“This policy has clearly worked – and continues to work – cementing the high levels of trust in the company with Australians saying about Bunnings that ‘They have always been proactive in providing advice and customer service, and that staff are friendly. I have never had a problem when returning products’ and ‘They have a wide range of products all under the one roof with staff that are always willing to help’.
“The importance of trust in our world is often under-appreciated, but the Roy Morgan Trusted Brand Awards show that maintaining trust is vital for a business to succeed and that without trust the world we live in doesn’t function and the simple day-to-day rhythms of life aren’t possible.”
