{"id":8989,"date":"2017-04-20T04:18:11","date_gmt":"2017-04-20T04:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=8989"},"modified":"2017-04-21T04:21:46","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T04:21:46","slug":"how-companies-like-united-and-wells-fargo-can-win-back-consumer-trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/how-companies-like-united-and-wells-fargo-can-win-back-consumer-trust\/","title":{"rendered":"How companies like United and Wells Fargo can win back consumer trust"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Hauser<\/a>, MIT Sloan School of Management<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s every CEO\u2019s worst nightmare: For whatever reason, the CEO\u2019s company is engulfed in negative publicity that threatens to damage its brand name, harm sales and alienate customers for months or even years to come. \"The<\/p>\n

The negative publicity can hit suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, or it can come in relentless waves, over a prolonged period of time, like a series of storms battering a coastal area, one after another. Wells Fargo<\/a> and United Airlines<\/a> have both been facing such an onslaught in recent weeks and months.<\/p>\n

How does a company respond? How does it go about repairing a damaged brand name and winning back customers?<\/p>\n

While I know very little about these particular situations apart from what I\u2019ve read, seen and heard via various media outlets, I know how difficult it is to change consumers\u2019 minds about a company and its products \u2013 and how winning back \u201ctrust\u201d is easier said than done. <\/p>\n

Five years ago, my colleagues \u2013 Gui Liberali of the Erasmus School of Economics in Rotterdam and Glen L. Urban at the MIT Sloan School of Management \u2013 and I jointly published a study, \u201cCompetitive information, trust, brand consideration and sales: Two field experiments<\/a>.\u201d Here\u2019s what we learned. <\/p>\n

Regaining customer trust<\/h2>\n

Over two years, we closely tracked four marketing field experiments by an American automaker whose brand had suffered from decades of negative publicity over the quality of its products. The experiments focused on company actions to earn back trust.<\/p>\n

In one experiment, the automaker provided an opportunity for potential customers to test-drive competitors\u2019 cars so that they might compare them with the company\u2019s own lineup. Another experiment provided an unbiased internet recommendation system to help customers find the car that met their needs, even if that car was not made by the automaker. <\/p>\n

Other experiments included customized relationship management and a moderated community to enable customers to speak to one another about all the cars they were considering. <\/p>\n

The theory, and it was a good one, was that the new offerings by the automaker were much better than customers perceived them to be. The automaker believed it would win in a fair match-up and set out to enable customers to make the comparison. <\/p>\n

Why they succeeded<\/h2>\n

What we found is that it\u2019s simply not enough to tell consumers that they can and should trust a company. It\u2019s critical to actually prove, again and again, that a company and its products can indeed be trusted \u2013 and customers must be provided with tangible, observable proof that a company has changed its ways and the quality of its products.<\/p>\n

The automaker\u2019s experiments enhanced trust, which \u2013 more importantly \u2013 led customers to consider and purchase its cars.<\/p>\n

Today, this automaker works to provide competitive information to customers when there is good news and when it is cost-effective to do so. For example, customers are encouraged to test drive cars for longer periods of time. Dealers hold targeted competitive test drives for selected customers, sometimes renting competitive vehicles to make the test drives possible. <\/p>\n

For the automaker, establishing genuine, observable trustworthiness wasn\u2019t enough. Skeptical customers, who would not even consider the automaker\u2019s cars, needed to be won over. The company found cost-effective ways, such as targeted marketing campaigns and digital marketing, to encourage these skeptical customers to pay attention and seek information. <\/p>\n

The bottom line: There\u2019s promised \u201ctrust\u201d and then there\u2019s genuine \u201ctrustworthiness.\u201d And the only sure way of getting to that trustworthiness stage is to make genuine internal changes \u2013 and then to get customers back into dealership showrooms, in the automaker\u2019s case, or into Wells Fargo bank branches or on to United airplanes. That\u2019s the only way consumers can determine for themselves whether a company and its products are again \u201ctrustworthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Winning over skeptics<\/h2>\n

When customers are skeptical, and even when they are not, it is good marketing for a company with superior products and services to provide competitive information about a company\u2019s products versus its competitors\u2019 products \u2013 with all the pluses and minuses involved in making such comparative information available to customers.<\/p>\n

If a company has indeed changed and is producing a better-quality product or service, providing competitive information can be an effective way of winning over the highly skeptical customer and creating a much-coveted \u201cvirtuous cycle\u201d of trust and loyalty.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know the details of Wells Fargo\u2019s controversy and marketing plans for the future, or, for that matter, those of United. But if whatever they convey to the public isn\u2019t targeted and backed up by tangible, trustworthy services and products, it probably won\u2019t win back as many customers as desired. In both cases, it is important that the firms listen to customers and provide high-quality services.<\/p>\n

Trust is earned over many years by providing to the customer the products and services that fulfill customer needs. Trust is earned by listening to and respecting the customer\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n

Trust me on this: Being trustworthy matters.<\/p>\n

John Hauser<\/a>, Professor of Marketing, MIT Sloan School of Management<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Hauser, MIT Sloan School of Management It\u2019s every CEO\u2019s worst nightmare: For whatever reason, the CEO\u2019s company is engulfed in negative publicity that threatens to damage its brand name, harm sales and alienate customers for months or even years to come. The negative publicity can hit suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, or it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":8990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,277],"tags":[2190,2186,2185,2188,184,2187,1748,2191,2189],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8989"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8991,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8989\/revisions\/8991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}