By Kim Tae-jong
Koreans’ trust in businesses has plunged to the lowest level in the Asia Pacific region, despite their relatively strong performances, a survey by an international public relations firm revealed Thursday.
The results were revealed in the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer, the firm’s 12th annual survey.
Only 31 percent of the “informed public in Korea” trust businesses, much lower than the level of trust in Asia-Pacific countries, which averaged 62 percent. The global average was 53 percent.
The general public’s trust was slightly lower at 30 percent, compared with Asia-Pacific's 51 percent and global average 47 percent.
Overall, Korea came second from bottom, ahead of just Japan among Asia-Pacific countries with its trust composite score down to 44 from 53 last year.
Edelman’s survey was produced by its research subsidiary Strategy One. It consisted of 20-minute online interviews conducted from Oct. 10 through Nov. 30 last year and randomly polled 25,000 general public respondents and 5,600 from an informed public group in two age groups (25-34 and 35-64). They belonged to the top 25 percent in terms of income with an education level of college or above in 25 countries.
More than 60 percent of Koreans were also unhappy with the way their country was being managed.
Edelman CEO in practices and insights Alan VanderMolen urged Korean businesses to seek long-term sustainable success to build trust.
“You need to place your customers ahead of profits, place your employees ahead of profits, and do things with businesses that allow a long term sustainable success,” he said. “Traditionally, Korean companies talked about their financial performances and products performance. All these things are stock market values but what Korean stakeholders are looking forward to seeing today isn’t a focus on a shareholder’s value but a focus on stakeholders’ values.”
Stakeholders include shareholders as well as other interested parties such as employees.
“Given your economy, it’s very unusual to see such a steep decline in your institutions,” VanderMolen said. “In general, if the economy is strong, you see a steady or increase in trust, in particular for business and government.”
In an effort to build trust, he also emphasized the importance of “two-way dialogue,” especially in the age of social networking services such as Twitter and Facebook, which requires increasing transparency.
“Businesses are going through changes based on the growth of social networking and social business where companies need to think about managing relationships with key stakeholders instead of managing perception, which is a one-way model that companies communicate in a message,” he said. “So you’re not talking about your products, how much they cost and related benefits. You’re talking about what’s important to your customers and your employees.”
For the coming years, he thinks the lack of trust will not continue.
“The voices of businesses will increase and they will have a significant impact on government’s policies. In 12 months from now, we’ll see an uptick. I mean we have to. We can’t get worse. If it gets worse, we will face fundamental questions about democracy,” he said.