Betting on a brand: How can trust game experiments inform a brand trust research agenda?

Abstract

For brands to succeed, they often need consumers to trust them. This has prompted marketing and consumer behaviour researchers to examine what makes certain brands more trusted and how brands can identify themselves as trustworthy. For over 25 years, experimental economists, behavioural scientists and others have examined interpersonal trust using an exercise—the trust game—where participants put money at risk based on how trustworthy they think other people are. This research has remained largely separate from work on brand trust, but this critical review aims to identify findings and concepts from trust game‐based research that are relevant to brand trust, and starts to develop an integrated research agenda for the future. In particular, it looks at how brand trust is measured, how brand trust might (or might not) be distinguished from transactional risk, and the heuristics and biases behind brand trust judgements and how these relate to brands' attempts to signal their trustworthiness.