Trust is among the most important aspects of any business category or company. Presumably, consumers are most likely to do business with companies they trust the most. On the other hand, businesses that lack consumer trust are likely to lose customers to the competition.
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Morning Consult, one of the largest polling firms in America, recently announced its list of the most trusted retail brands. The companies in the evaluation included traditional retailers, e-commerce companies and grocery chain operations. The firm created its list by taking respondents who trust a given retailer and subtracting those who do not. The data comes from the ongoing polls it creates each day from 12,000 people. People who had no opinion of a retailer, or those who were not sure of an answer, were excluded. A key finding was:

That retailers emerged from the past 15 months with no deterioration in consumer trust shows they balanced high demand, low supply and the needs of consumers who typically don’t buy much online. Overall, a positive sign for the industry.

Retailers as a category did slightly better than grocery chains. This has been true since Morning Consult started the survey in January 2018.

Morning Consults ended up with ratings for 20 retailers and grocery chains. The analysts who did the survey discovered an interesting trend:

Home improvement brands have earned consumers’ highest trust: Home Depot, Lowe’s and Ace Hardware are among the top five of Morning Consult’s Most Trusted Retail Brands.

Home Depot, the nation’s largest home improvement retailer, took the top spot. As a matter of fact, it has long been the biggest company in its category. Founded in 1987, it has 2,298 stores in North America. Its stores are massive, covering an average of 105,000 square feet. In total, Home Depot employs about 500,000 people, which makes it among the largest employers in the U.S. Home Depot claims to sell 35,000 items in its stores. It also has a large e-commerce presence. Taken together these lines of business drove total revenue last year of $132.1 billion.

Perhaps the reason Home Depot did so well in the Morning Consult survey is the way management views its business. It demonstrates this with what it calls an inverted pyramid. At the top of the pyramid is customers. The CEO is at the bottom.

Click here to see which is America’s worst retailer.

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