Brand engagement consultancy paves the way to a new trust economy

Online, October 6, 2009 (Newswire.com) - "Why do they trust us?" It is a question companies trying to stay on their toes should be asking. But while "trust" is identified by most marketers and organisations as their most valuable asset, successfully building business and brand trust has baffled many - until now.

A team from Melbourne-based engagement consultancy, mext, together with morphological psychology professor Wilhelm Salber and leading consumer psychologist Barbara Grohsgart, have spent over five years researching, refining and developing a highly effective psychological model of how trust forms.

The HuTrust® model takes into account six trust-forming components and enables mext to deconstruct an individual or a group's trust drivers and inhibitors and reconstruct them to incorporate trust-building elements.

"Over the past decade, there has been so much talk and proof of the high value and importance of trust, but until now no one has been able to truly help organisations build trust with scientifically proven and measurable approaches," says mext managing director, Stefan Grafe.

mext is the only company in Australia applying morphological psychology - a market research-specific psychological approach and the world's most modern psychology theory. At mext, the team qualitatively and quantitatively researches people's fundamental, and often unconscious, motivating forces behind brand and product decisions.

As well as its remarkable ability to measure trust, the HuTrust® model also yields highly similar results to the Net Promoter Score, an international standard for measuring and improving customer loyalty used by leading companies worldwide.

"One of the biggest challenges for companies is earning trust and credibility in a rapidly changing world. By understanding how trust forms, mext can precisely identify the drivers and inhibitors of trust and optimise them for brands and their every touch point," says Mr Grafe.

HuTrust® has helped many mext clients achieve sales and brand growth of up to 36 percent without additional investment. In Australia, Tower Insurance, Origin, 20th Century Fox, Sensis and National Foods, among others, have embraced the mext model, while international clients include Qatar Airways, European Telco Swisscom and KPN, and SPC Europe and Asia.

Besides empirical market success and the redevelopment of trust among clients, the HuTrust® model and trust is proven to generate uptake of new products and services, acceptance of premium pricing, and recommendation by customers and non-customers.

"Trust has always been and will always be a key to business growth. Considering how important the need for trust is, it's hard to believe how bamboozled we have been by so many other fancy marketing and brand concepts. Maybe the recent focus on and need for trust will re-focus brand owners on their most important success lever."