Marketing Management, 16th Edition

Managing Corporate Trust, Credibility, and Reputation

Building trust is one prerequisite to enjoying healthy long-term relationships.51 Trust is a firm’s willingness to rely on a business partner. It depends on a number of interpersonal and interorganizational factors, such as the firm’s perceived competence, integrity, honesty, and benevolence. Personal interactions with employees of the firm, opinions about the company as a whole, and perceptions of trust will evolve with experience.

A firm is more likely to be seen as trustworthy when it provides full, honest information, when employee incentives are aligned with customer needs, when it partners with customers to create market value, and when it offers valid comparisons with competitive products. ...