Consumer Trust: Does Company Location Matter?

A survey by Edelman polled 32,000 respondents in 28 countries about their trust in companies with headquarters based in China, Germany and the United States. Of the three, it found that trust was lowest in companies based in China, with only 30 percent of respondents who were not from China saying they had trust in the firms. This was followed by the U.S., which had a more neutral response of 53 percent, while Germany was trusted by twice the share of respondents to its Asian counterpart, with 62 percent of respondents outside of Germany saying they would trust companies based in the European nation.

According to the report, levels of trust have declined generally across the board towards companies headquartered in each of the three global powers in the past 10 years. The U.S. and Germany have seen the greatest fall from grace, each losing 9 percentage points since 2014. Countries in Southeast Asia, which in this survey included Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, saw the biggest decline in trust towards the U.S., dropping 19 percentage points overall. Meanwhile, confidence in Chinese companies from this region increased by 14 percentage points - the only case of a reported increase in confidence.

The Edelman Barometer also looked more widely at levels of trust in NGOs, business, government, and media in different countries. It found that where China remained in the top position both this year and last, India had moved up from rank 4 to rank 2. The United Kingdom meanwhile, has tumbled down, passing Argentina and Japan to now have the lowest level of trust in these combined institutions of any of the surveyed countries, with just 39 percent of respondents reporting trust in the four groups in 2024. The report found that developed countries reported lower levels of trust than developing countries.

The average of the 32 countries polled saw that governments were perceived as being far less competent and ethical than businesses. Media too was seen as less competent and ethical, although did not perform as poorly as governments, while NGOs scored highest on the ethical question but were only seen as being moderately competent.