Edelman: Trust in business slides

• Asia Pacific business losing trust
• Need for interaction with consumers
• Corporate channels require work

Regional - Edelman has released the findings from its 2009 Trust Barometer which shows businesses across Asia are experiencing a significant fall in trust from stakeholders and consumers.

The 10th edition of the trust barometer surveyed 1,375 people across Asia Pacific from Australia to China, India, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea. Respondents were aged between 25 and 64, were college educated and belonged in the top 25% of household income per age group in each country.

The survey found that since last year, trust in business in the Asia Pacific region has dropped off significantly with 59% of people trusting business less than a year ago. Japan showed the biggest change, with 79% of respondents trusting businesses less than in 2008.

Alan VanderMolen, Edelman's regional president & global head of intellectual property, has been intimately involved in the research and believes the drop in trust for businesses and brands has reached a crescendo.

"What's interesting this year for me is that you have the perfect storm around the destruction of trust in business. You've had the economic meltdown and a lot of the cause of that is around the lack of regulation and then product failure.

"It's not just one kind of thing you can hook on to - it's a number of issues all of which eat at eroding trust in business coming together."

VanderMolen believes that regional businesses have to become more adept at engaging a dialogue with all the stakeholders critical to its success.

"Business isn't comfortable with dialogue - business is very comfortable with communicating messages and it needs to become much more adept at engaging real time transparent dialogues around the issues which are most important to its individual stakeholders."

Historically, Asia Pacific as a region has never really had to be transparent when it comes to business, with a strong tradition of family-owned and operated businesses that "have traditionally been very cozy with patriarchal governments."

"Now there's a situation where there's a need to talk about what's happened, why it happened, what you're doing as a business or a brand to make sure it doesn't happen again and how you can get back to a path of sustainable economic growth."

Trust in traditional media as a source of information has also waned, where consumers are again after more interaction, and the trust in information coming through corporate channels has also dropped away.

"The bottom line in all of this for me is dialogue interactivity," VanderMolen said.

"It's not a one-way street for business and government. It's a multi-lateral set of relationships where the best interests of everyone are getting back to sustainable economic growth."