January 27th, 2022, Janice Fernandes
In a world where advertisements are capable of making or breaking a brand’s image, how much do consumers trust the claims made by food and alcohol brands compared to other sectors?
To answer that question, YouGov has undertaken an analysis across 17 markets. We measured advertising trust across 11 categories and, while overall consumers say adverts from the food industry are among the most trustworthy (18%), alcohol makes up only half of that share (9%).
Trust in food ads
Of the 17 markets surveyed, Swedish consumers are the most likely to view food as the sector that produces the most trustworthy ads (31%). There is an eight-point difference when compared with the views of consumers from other markets. Great Britain comes in further down at second place with 23%.
Fewer than one in five consumers in the American markets find ads about food stuff the most trustworthy of all the sectors we asked about, with US (16%) and Mexico (14%) featuring lower on the list compared to other markets.
While Italy and Spain are as likely as the global audience to say they believe in these ads (18% each), France (13%) and Poland (12%) have some of the lowest points with consumers less likely to view food advertisers as the most trustworthy.
Age is not a defining factor among global consumers as the trustworthiness of the food sector is on a similar range of 17-18% across age groups.
Trust in alcohol ads
The proportion of global consumers who find adverts from the alcohol industry the most trustworthy is comparatively low (9%). The reason behind this low rate may be the advertising regulations imposed in many markets and even a complete ban in some, especially in Asia.
However, consumers in Sweden are slightly more than twice as likely to choose this category as the one with the most trustworthy ads.
Poland and US are among the least likely markets to trust food adverts more than any others, but they find themselves among as some of the more likely markets to trust claims made by alcohol brands – Poland (12% vs. 15%) and US (16% vs. 14%) respectively.
Unsurprisingly, the Asian markets find alcohol advertisements least trustworthy along with the UAE (3%). This finds them at the lower end of the ladder with less than one in twenty consumers saying they trust alcohol ads. Alcohol brands appear to have a tough task of working around these limitations and still reaching the consumers.
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Methodology: The data is based on the interviews of adults aged 18 and over in 17 markets with sample sizes varying between 511 and 2,628 for each market. All interviews were conducted online in November 2021. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples.