CORPORATE REPUTATION, BRAND ETHICS AND TRUST IN THE BRAZILIAN INDUSTRY

All organizations rely on their reputation to strengthen their image and increase consumer trust and credibility in their products and/or services. In this context, developing an Ethical Brand (EB) and a Corporate Reputation (CR) continues to be a major challenge. Therefore, this research aims to investigate empirically how trust affects EB and CR. This study used secondary data from the Authenticity Gap Report (AGR), collected on-line in 160 Brazilian organizations, using a structured questionnaire to a non-probability sampling from 20 different industries with 1.328 Engaged Consumers. Different references were used for analysis: (i) the Trust model in buyer-seller relationships; (ii) the Ethical Reputation Brand model; and (iii) the CR Ranking Index (MERCO). The results indicated that three of five dimensions of the Trust model represented good CR indicators. From the 20 different industries analyzed, three have the best average, according to the MERCO Ranking and the three combined indicators from the AGR. Results demonstrated the role of authenticity, trust, and industry as a fundamental element to EB and CR.