The favorite brands of the Swiss

Consumers share their brand and product experiences with others - both good and bad. However, word of bad experiences spreads much faster. This is shown by the current study "European Trusted Brands 2014" by the media and market research company Reader's Digest. The representative study identifies the most trustworthy brands in various product categories - without specifying brands. In Switzerland alone, respondents this year named a total of 2545 different brands that they personally consider particularly trustworthy.

In Switzerland, many domestic brands are at the top. These include Ricola (sweets), Lindt (chocolate), Swiss Life (life insurance), Bico (mattresses), Emmi (dairy products), Coop (service stations), Elmex (toothpaste), Kuoni (tour operator) and Charles Vögele (clothing). In the laundry detergent sector, the Migros brand Total came out on top. In previous years, the international market giants Persil and Ariel had alternated in this position. The Nivea brand is a phenomenon: in all ten countries surveyed, it is number one in the skin care category. In Switzerland, Nivea is number one in both the skin care and hair care categories across all fourteen study years.

"Brand trust is a great asset for stable customer relationships," says Werner Neunzig, Managing Director of Reader's Digest Germany, Switzerland, Austria. "Credibility, transparency and reliability are the best ingredients for trust, all the more so in times when consumers can find out almost anything about a brand and the products and services behind it." For brand management and brand development, he said, it takes a creative flair to recognize what is really important to consumers.

Poor service threatens brand change

According to the survey, the best quality is important to the Swiss, but so is the company's noticeable effort to serve the customer. When consumers decide to switch brands, price increases often or very often play a role (50 percent). Even more decisive, however, is poor service (51 percent). When customers have a good experience, an average of five other people hear about it. Bad experiences, on the other hand, reach more people. Just under a quarter of Swiss respondents (23 percent) even pass on bad experiences to ten or more people.