By James Wells
SYDNEY: Sony has beaten every other consumer electronics brand except Nokia in the latest, and less comprehensive, version of the Reader’s Digest ‘Who Do You Trust Australia?’ survey.
This year the Reader’s Digest poll was less significant after it was watered down to just 751 consumers – exactly half the 1,502 people surveyed last year.
Sony was ranked sixth in the 2006 survey one place behind Nokia in the sixth version of the report which lists the country’s most trusted brands. Last year Sony ranked fourth. Sony’s mobile phone brand, Sony Ericcson, ranked 56th.
With its new ranking, Sony made a minor adjustment to its press release on the Reader’s Digest survey from 12 months ago.
Last year the press release was titled: “Australia has voted… Sony most trustworthy consumer electronics company”.
This year, the title of the press release was modified to: “Australia has voted… Sony is the most trusted consumer electronics brand”.
Harvey Norman, which ranked 70th last year in the survey, did not make the top 137 brands.
Westinghouse, which failed to receive a ranking last year, returned to the survey as the most trusted whitegoods brand in 32nd position.
According to respondents to this year’s Reader’s Digest survey, trust was a more important factor for consumers when selecting a brand or product, up from 84 per cent last year to 89 per cent this year.
The survey incorporated the contributing factors of trust including positive past experiences and perceived quality.
According to Reader’s Digest, once a brand wins a consumer’s trust, they are likely to become loyal purchasers.
Other appliance and consumer electronics brands featuring in this year’s survey included Panasonic who dropped nine places to become the equal 22nd most trusted brand with survey re-entrant and most trusted camera brand – Canon.
Retail brands also featured prominently in the survey including Woolworths (12th), Big W (13th), Kmart (19th), Dick Smith (26th), Myer (45th), Mitre 10 (46th) and David Jones (51st).
Other appliance brands featured prominently in the list including LG (35th down two places), Fisher & Paykel (35th down four places), Philips (48th down seven places), Hewlett Packard (49th down nine places), Hoover (54th down five places), Whirlpool (57th steady), Simpson (58th up one place), Samsung (64th down one place), Miele (64th up nine places), Apple (85th up two places), Maytag (93rd down four places), Motorola (103rd down seven places), Smeg (106th down nine places) and Telstra (108th down 10 places).
Other brands entering the survey who did not appear last year included Electrolux (58th) and Toshiba (69th).
Appliance brands not featured in the survey included Dyson, Sunbeam, Breville, Kambrook.
The top three brands in the survey were Cadbury, Panadol and Colgate.