How building trust drives sales
Why building trust should be a key pillar of your brand strategy
One of the most popular features of connected products is product authentication. It is a powerful tool that enhances sales conversion rates, boosts desirability, and increases product value.
The Brand Asset Valuator (BAV) framework, widely adopted throughout the brand marketing industry, identifies four key pillars that determine the value of a brand. These pillars include differentiation, relevance, knowledge, and esteem. Differentiation refers to how unique and distinct a brand is compared to its competitors, while relevance measures the extent to which a brand is meaningful and useful to its target audience. Knowledge represents how well-known and familiar a brand is to consumers, and esteem evaluates the level of respect and admiration a brand has among consumers and its industry peers.
Trust is a critical component of building esteem for a brand and determining its overall value. When consumers trust a brand, they are more likely to admire and respect it, which can lead to higher esteem and greater brand value. Trust also plays a role in the relevance pillar of the BAV framework, as consumers are more likely to find a brand meaningful and useful if they trust it.
Establishing trust is of increasing importance in today's marketplace. Consumers are becoming more conscious of the risks associated with buying counterfeit products, particularly when shopping online or purchasing pre-owned items. Trust is crucial for ensuring that consumers feel confident purchasing a fashion product, knowing it will meet their expectations in terms of quality, design, functionality, and ethical production practices. Brands that are transparent, authentic and committed to delivering on their promises will be the most successful at building trust. Failure to establish trust can harm a brand's reputation and bottom line.
How authentication drives business success
Authentication boosts sales
Authentication is a critical component in building trust with consumers, as it helps
to establish the authenticity of a brand's products and associated information. Products that offer authentication reduce sales friction by providing added confidence in the buying process. Authenticity is relevant for more than just high-value purchases; it also plays a crucial role in ensuring safety, performance, and ethical standards, all of which are significant factors influencing consumer behaviour.
Authentication drives engagement
Authentication is a powerful driver of product engagement, with 70% of consumers citing it as the reason for connecting with their purchase¹. By leveraging authentication to drive engagement, brands can more effectively connect and activate consumers, regardless of their specific goals. Whether the aim is to generate leads or drive traffic to a website, starting the conversation with authentication is the most effective strategy.
Authentication increases value
Easily authenticated products are more attractive to consumers as they can be more easily sold and retain their value better when resold, allowing consumers to recoup a greater portion of their initial investment. At the time of purchase, consumers are already considering their options for when they are finished with the product, with 35.6% of them planning to resell it2.
Challenges and solutions
So, authentication has the potential to drive sales. However, it also brings challenges.
For example, one of the best ways to enable authentication of a product is to provide it with a digital ID, in the form of a QR code or an NFC tag. Unfortunately, not all digital product IDs provide reliable authentication. Counterfeiters create not only copies of products, but also copies of digital IDs. All they need to do is clone just one, which they will then apply to multiple products. So, without adequate security measures all forms of digital markers are vulnerable to cloning, and the brand at risk of wrongly verifying fakes as being authentic. Another strategy counterfeiters take is simply to apply a fake code that redirects to the brands website.
Taking security lightly exposes brands to serious risks that go beyond counterfeiting and ID theft, such as erosion of consumer trust, non-compliance and supply chain ungovernability. Another issue is that brands can overestimate the capabilities of some authentication technologies, especially those that are perceived as being of highly secure, such as authentication systems based on blockchain, which by itself is not able to securely authenticate a physical product ID. Moreover, this overestimation can also negatively impact sustainability strategies, such as the use of NFC with One Time Passwords (OTP) which can reduce a brands ability to intercept, monitor and take action against fake products.
This is why it is so important to invest in product authentication that is Secure by Design. Only then can brands unlock all the countless opportunities to deliver value to the organisation, customers, and ultimately the entire system.
There are many ways in which a correct product authentication help brands boost their business, from customer engagement to traceability and returns management. If you are interested in equipping your products with secure and functional authentication systems, please contact us.
