The ROI of Trust: Building Business Success in an Era of Privacy and Trust Concerns

TRUSTe WHITEPAPER
The ROI of Trust: Building Business
Success in an Era of Privacy and
Trust Concerns
Executive Summary
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©2010 TRUSTe. All rights reserved.Many people have cited the recent near meltdown of the global financial system as a powerful example of what can happen when there is a crisis of trust. In fact, it was more of a freeze up than a meltdown. Lending between banks, and from banks to customers slowed down and became more expensive until the pipes through which money flows nearly froze.
Why? The reason most often cited was an arcane phrase in the world of finance that suddenly became household words-counterparty risk. Simply put, trust among the various parties in the financial system had disappeared. Can I trust insurance company A when they say they have the capital to back the liabilities they have covered? If I loan bank B money overnight, can I trust they can or will pay me back-at any rate of interest? The mantra suddenly changed from "return on capital" to "return of capital."
As people move more of their lives online, we are entering an era where trust becomes perhaps the most critical component of a company's brand. Can I trust they will safeguard my identity and private information? Can I trust they are who and what they say they are?
Business-to-business companies also increasingly recognize how critical building trusted online relationships has become to their success. This value of improving trust goes beyond just online marketing and ecommerce. Within an organization, the presence of trust among employees and between a company and its partners acts a lubricant, making virtually every part of the business move faster while reducing costs. According to a recent Watson-Wyatt study, high-trust organizations outperform low-trust organizations by approximately 300%.
This whitepaper will explore how business leaders like yourself can align trust, credibility and privacy processes in your organization-and your company's broader ecosystem-into a Business Integrity Strategy. It will examine the hard and soft costs-including opportunity costs-of poor trust, and will examine ways to build trust.
Do people trust your brand?
In an era when increasingly crafty cybercriminals and others seek to profit from misappropriating personal data, it's more important than ever to cascade sound business processes and practices regarding privacy and data management throughout your business. Conveying a sense of trustworthiness and credibility now comprises a key element of a company's brand or an organization's reputation. It has also become a critical factor in customers' decisions to do business with you.
88% of online shoppers said that the protection of their personal data was their top concern.
For example, in findings published in April 2010, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania, found that people in of all ages and in all walks of life-from young adults to government officials to corporate executives-increasingly grapple with protecting their personal information. In what is among the first quantitative studies to look at young people's attitudes toward privacy, it also found that contrary to earlier assumptions this coveted demographic shares the same concerns about privacy and trust as other age groups. Among the findings, eighty-eight percent of people of all ages said they have refused to give out information to a business because they thought it was too personal or unnecessary.
2 ©2010. TRUSTe. All rights reserved.Trust. We build it.
TRUSTe was originally founded in 1997 as a non-profit organization with the mission of fostering online commerce by helping businesses and other online organizations self-regulate privacy concerns. Today, the company ranks as the leading Internet privacy services provider. Best known for operating the world's largest privacy seal program, TRUSTe certifies thousands of organizations worldwide, presenting billions of impressions that guide consumers to the sites of companies that protect their online privacy. These include Apple Inc., BestBuy, eBay, Facebook, IBM, NFL, Nestle, Microsoft, Oracle, Yahoo, and many, many more.
First and foremost, these organizations become license... [download for more]