Woolworths is Australia’s Most Trusted Brand, Roy Morgan

Roy Morgan has announced Woolworths as Australia’s Most Trusted Brand, alongside other category winners, Bunnings, Kmart and Toyota in the Trusted Brand Awards for 2023. “These brands have had an exceptional year by garnering high levels of trust, and exceedingly low, or negligible, levels of distrust throughout the year.”

All 20 of the winning brands have demonstrated their market leading performance by emerging ahead of all competitors in their respective categories.

The winners of the Roy Morgan Trusted Brand Awards for 2023 are:

‘Best of the Best’ Most Trusted Brand for 2023: Woolworths

The Roy Morgan Trusted Brand Awards recognise the outstanding levels of trust built up by 20 brands across a range of different industries and services including Supermarkets, Retail, Department & Discount Department Stores, Services, Charities, Automotive, Superannuation, Insurance, Utilities, Government Services, Media, Mining & Petroleum, Banks, Telecommunications and more.

Several of the Trusted Brand Award winners appeared in the overall Top 20 Most Trusted Brands in the most recent quarter led by Woolworths, Bunnings, Kmart, Toyota, ABC, NRMA, Bendigo Bank and Australia Post– all of which scored highly and challenged for top spot.

The ultimate winner as the ‘Best of the Best’ Most Trusted Brand for a second consecutive year is Woolworths which has consistently rated as the Most Trusted Brand over the last three challenging years since taking the honour from Bunnings.

Roy Morgan congratulates Woolworths in winning the ‘Best of the Best’ Award as the ‘Most Trusted Brand in Australia’, represented by Brad Banducci, CEO of Woolworths.

Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine says the 20 winners in the Roy Morgan Trusted Brand Awards have outperformed their competitors by maintaining consistently high levels of trust, and minimal distrust, in a challenging environment of high inflation and rising interest rates.

“The last few years have certainly provided their challenges with a once in a century pandemic transitioning into a period of high inflation and rising interest rates. Inflation has been at its highest for over 30 years and interest rates have increased at their most rapid rate this century.

“Despite the incredible differences these circumstances present, we have found the vast majority of Australia’s most trusted brands have backed up their performance from a year ago and confirmed their market leading positions with consecutive wins in their categories,” Ms Levine said.

The repeat winners include many of the most trusted brands in the country including Woolworths (Supermarkets – and ‘Best of the Best’), Bunnings (Retail), Kmart (Department & Discount Department Stores), Toyota (Automotive), Apple (Technology) and Australia Post (Services).

Other highly trusted consecutive winners include PayPal (Non-Bank Financial Services), CSIRO (Government Services), Samsung (Consumer Products), AustralianSuper (Superannuation), Salvation Army (Charities), Aussie Broadband (Telecommunications) and NRMA (Insurance).

“It’s also important to recognise there were two first-time winners this year – Synergy in the highly competitive Utilities sector and Virgin Australia – taking out the title as Australia’s most trusted Travel & Tourism brand after last year’s winner, Qantas, ran into significant turbulence this year,” she said.

“Underlying Virgin Australia’s victory this year as the most trusted Travel and Tourism brand were respondent quotes like this one ‘I have flown Virgin ever since they arrived in Australia, they are always open and honest with me, even with flight delays the line of communications are open’ – drawing a clear contrast with their primary competitor.

Most impressive of all was the performance of Australia’s leading supermarket chain Woolworths which has now spent three straight years as Australia’s most trusted brand and has once again been awarded Roy Morgan’ Best of the Best’ Trusted Brand Award.”

Ms Levine gives context to Woolworth’s win. “The Supermarket industry finds itself navigating an increasingly volatile landscape with cost-of-living pressures, and aggressive, even violent customer behaviour. Trust is not a static achievement; it is continually tested, particularly in supermarkets.”

Respondents to the survey rated Woolworths highly for quality products, focusing clearly on the needs of customers, reliability, and community-mindedness.

Typical comments from respondents were that Woolworths has ‘A great loyalty program, good customer service and good weekly specials’, that ‘They communicate frequently, care about their customers and are transparent’ and ‘Woolworths cares about the farmers and suppliers. They look after their customers and their staff.’

Another indicative comment about Woolworths included ‘Products are always in good condition. Transparent and open about why something isn’t in stock. Woolworths will add products to the local shop by popular demand and they have friendly and reliable staff’.

Ms Levine notes the importance of trust on businesses. “The consecutive victories for Woolworths are a demonstration to other businesses about the value derived from building trust and enhancing a company’s standing in the wider community. High levels of trust, and low to negligible distrust, are both key factors in attracting new customers which inevitably flows directly through to the bottom line.”

Many of this year’s winners have built on their wins in Roy Morgan’s inaugural Trusted Brand Awards a year ago and repeated their victories this year. The back-to-back wins are a testament to how important these market-leading companies regard maintaining a high level of trust is to their success.

“The importance of trust in our world is often under-appreciated, but without trust, the world we live in doesn’t function and the simple day-to-day rhythms of life aren’t possible,” Ms Levine said.

“Over the last year we have witnessed many examples of how a lack of trust, and rising distrust, can destroy a brand’s reputation and provide a direct hit to the bottom line. How a brand responds to these challenges can define whether that company has a future or will wither and fade into irrelevance.”