Brand reputation is increasingly measured through trust, usefulness, behavior, and the voices people believe. The latest Edelman figures show that 85% considered a good brand reputation important or a critical deal breaker when deciding what to buy or use, while 88% said trusting a brand mattered at that point. The results below put those benchmarks into context across markets, purchase decisions, social expectations, personal relevance, trusted sources, and generative-AI discovery.
Contents
- Brand trust benchmarks across markets
- What consumers count as reputation at purchase
- Personal relevance and cultural authenticity
- Brand action, silence, and reputation risk
- Trusted voices and lived experiences
- AI and brand reputation discovery
Brand trust benchmarks across markets
The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Brand Trust, From We to Me surveyed people from April 24 to May 5, 2025. In that measurement period, 80% trusted the brands they used to do what was right. That was higher than trust in business in general, at 65%, NGOs at 60%, media in general at 55%, and government in general at 54%. Employees’ trust in their employer was 79%.
These figures describe different objects of trust, so they should not be treated as a single ranking of identical institutions. They do show a useful reputation pattern: a familiar brand can be trusted more than the broad business category or other large institutions. For marketers, the implication is that brand-level conduct is part of the reputation people experience, not merely a reflection of the reputation of business as a whole.
The same report recorded trust in brands in general at 68% across its 14-market average in January 2025. The institutional Trust Index averaged 55% across those markets in January 2025. Because the two measures have different labels and the report gives separate measurement periods, they are best read as benchmarks rather than as a direct change calculation.
Headquarters also mattered. Across the 15-market average measured from April 24 to May 5, 2025, 75% trusted domestically headquartered brands, compared with 60% for foreign-headquartered brands. The domestic-brand trust advantage was 30 percentage points in Germany and 29 percentage points in Canada. These are market-specific gaps, not a universal rule for every category or country.
| Reputation benchmark | Result | Measurement period |
|---|---|---|
| Brands people use do what is right | 80% | April 24–May 5, 2025 |
| Business in general does what is right | 65% | April 24–May 5, 2025 |
| Domestically headquartered brands are trusted | 75% | April 24–May 5, 2025 |
| Foreign-headquartered brands are trusted | 60% | April 24–May 5, 2025 |
| Trust in brands in general, 14-market average | 68% | January 2025 |
Source: 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Brand Trust, From We to Me.
What consumers count as reputation at purchase
Reputation is not an abstract awareness measure when people are choosing a product or service. In the April 24–May 5, 2025 Edelman measurement, 88% said trusting a brand was important or a critical deal breaker when deciding what to buy or use. The same share said trusting the company that owns a brand was important or a critical deal breaker. Good brand reputation itself reached 85%.
Operational experience was close behind. High-quality customer service was important or a critical deal breaker for 84%, good value for money for 82%, and the best quality for 80%. Together, these results place trust beside service, value, and performance. A strong reputation therefore has to survive contact with the product, the support process, and the price—not only perform well in advertising.
The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Brand Growth in an Insular World reported a similar trust benchmark. From April 23 to May 11, 2026, 88% said trusting a brand was an important or critical purchase criterion. In that same report, 89% named quality and 88% named value as important or critical purchase criteria. These results come from a later report and should not be presented as a direct year-over-year panel comparison with the 2025 figures.
The 2026 report also found that over two-thirds considered it important or a critical purchase deal breaker that brands they buy are headquartered in their country. That domestic-headquarters purchase preference was up 5 percentage points since 2023 in the report’s comparison. The result highlights how origin can become part of the brand proposition when consumers connect reputation with local identity, resilience, or accountability.
Personal relevance and cultural authenticity
Consumers also connect reputation with what a brand contributes to their lives. From April 24 to May 5, 2025, 68% said it was very or extremely important for brands in their lives to help them feel happy, confident, inspired, safe, and calm. The wording combines several positive outcomes, so this statistic should be understood as a broad personal-relevance measure rather than as a score for one emotion.
Other roles were important to substantial shares of respondents: 62% said it was very or extremely important for brands to give them optimism, 61% said it was very or extremely important for brands to help them do good, 59% said it was very or extremely important for brands to teach and educate them, and 51% said it was very or extremely important for brands to provide a sense of community.
Among the people who considered each role important, many said that role had become more important over the previous five years. The share was 76% for brand optimism, measured through April 24–May 5, 2025; 75% for helping people do good; 74% for making people feel good; and 73% for providing community. These are conditional results: they describe people who already regarded the role as important, not all respondents.
For marketing guides, the practical lesson is to separate cultural relevance from slogans. A reputation claim becomes more credible when the brand’s product, service, education, or community experience gives people a reason to associate it with those outcomes. The statistics do not identify which initiatives work best, but they do show that personal meaning is part of how many people evaluate brands.
Brand action, silence, and reputation risk
Brand behavior on societal issues can affect purchase intent. In the April 24–May 5, 2025 Edelman measurement, 60% said they were more likely to buy a brand that ensures clean air and water in the local community. The corresponding figures were 55% for a brand that combats climate change, 53% for one that promotes racial equality, 51% for one that combats economic inequality, 48% for one that fights misinformation, and 45% for one that promotes gender equality.
The results vary by issue, so they should not be collapsed into a single social-purpose score. They indicate that the perceived relevance of an issue can influence how people describe their willingness to buy. They also suggest that local environmental conditions may be especially visible in purchase consideration, with clean air and water producing the highest figure among the listed actions.
Silence can also carry a cost when people believe a brand has an obligation to act. Among respondents who said a brand had an obligation to address at least one societal issue, 51% said they would be less likely to buy from it if it ignored that obligation, and 51% said they would lose trust in it. Among people aged 61 and older in that group, the figures were 60% for being less likely to buy and 55% for losing trust.
Perceived connection to an issue changed expectations. From April 24 to May 5, 2025, 37% said a brand was obligated to act when it had zero identified connections to a societal issue. That rose to 55% when the brand had one identified connection. The figures do not define how the connections were identified in this summary, so they should be used to frame expectations rather than to prescribe a universal response threshold.
Trusted voices and lived experiences
Brand reputation travels through people and experiences. In the April 24–May 5, 2025 Edelman measurement, 84% trusted friends and family to give accurate information about a brand. Customers like themselves were trusted by 80%, customer reviews by 68%, brand employees by 63%, journalists by 59%, a brand’s CEO by 58%, and influencers by 58%.
| Information source | Share who trusted it to provide accurate brand information |
|---|---|
| Friends and family | 84% |
| Customers like themselves | 80% |
| Customer reviews | 68% |
| Brand employees | 63% |
| Journalists | 59% |
| Brand CEO | 58% |
| Influencers | 58% |
Source: 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Brand Trust, From We to Me, measured April 24–May 5, 2025.
The ordering matters for reputation strategy. Peer experience ranked above formal brand spokespeople in this set of measures. Employees and reviews also ranked above the CEO and influencers, although each source reached a majority. That does not make every review or personal recommendation accurate; it describes the share saying they trusted each source to provide accurate information.
Personal experience was another important signal: 59% said their own experience had at least moderate influence on their opinion of a brand before buying. This connects reputation communications to delivery. A campaign can create attention, but the buyer’s prior experience remains a stated influence before the next purchase.
AI and brand reputation discovery
Generative AI is becoming another route through which people encounter product information. From April 24 to May 5, 2025, 55% said they used generative-AI-based platforms. Usage varied by age: 74% among people aged 18–28, 66% among those aged 29–44, 48% among those aged 45–60, and 28% among people aged 61 and older.
Among generative-AI users, 91% said they used those platforms for shopping in some way. Within that user group, 41% said they used generative AI to get personalized product recommendations. These are usage estimates for the stated period, not forecasts of future adoption and not a measure that every recommendation is accepted or acted on.
The implications for brand reputation are straightforward but limited by the data. Brands may be discovered through synthesized answers as well as through reviews, recommendations, and direct search. Clear product information, consistent customer experiences, and credible third-party discussion can therefore matter in more than one discovery environment. The supplied figures do not measure which brands appeared in AI answers, how accurate those answers were, or whether AI-driven discovery converted into purchases.
For marketers, the strongest common thread across these statistics is consistency. Trust is a purchase criterion, reputation is tied to service and value, social expectations rise when a brand is seen as connected to an issue, and people often rely on peers or their own experience. AI adds another discovery channel, but it does not remove the underlying need for a brand to be recognizable, useful, and credible across the experiences people can verify.