Aaj Tak named the most trusted television brand: Brand Trust Report 2012

The second-most trusted brand in the television category is NDTV, followed by Discovery, and the news arm of the Zee stable.

Aaj Tak, the national news channel, which is a part of the TV Today Network, has been named as the most trusted brand across the entire television category by the recently-released Brand Trust Report (BTR) 2012/02. According to the report, Aaj Tak has also emerged as the most trusted television news channel of India in 2011.

The second-most trusted brand in the television category is NDTV, followed by Discovery, and the news arm of the Zee stable.

The other most trusted brands in the TV category include Star plus, Colors, STAR Movies, Food Food, and India TV.

Within the GEC category, Colors and STAR are the most trusted brands, according to the Brand Trust Report, while STAR Movies and HBO are the most trusted brands in the overall movie genre.

As part of the overall BTR methodology, the 2012/02 BTR questionnaire was designed to enquire into approximately 425 aspects, of which 391 were directly brand-related.

The study took into account two other important influences on brand trust -- brand recall and the trust-experience of brands. The trust-experience question also enquired respondents on why they trust the brands they named.

There were 61 primary components selected on Brand Trust, wherein the respondents were shown showcards with the statement and asked to name three brands each. The responses were deliberately open-ended, allowing respondents to name anything perceived as a brand and believed to fit the question. This research generated two million data points, and 17,000 unique brands across 15 cities.

The questionnaire studied three brand-related influences -- brand recall, brand trust components, and the stability of these components. Here, each respondent had to write the names of 15 brands, unassisted. They were asked to name local, national, and multinational brands, separately. A total of approximately 40,000 brand names were generated from this question.

Says N Chandramouli, CEO, Trust Research Advisory, "Trust Research Advisory's proprietary Trust Matrix measures 61 tangible and intangible aspects of Brand Trust (called primary components), which combine to encompass all positive behaviours and attitudes towards a brand. The responses to these 61 components focus on the ingredients that make up Brand Trust, eliciting stakeholder responses from deep-seated associations the brand makes with them."

For the record, Trust Research Advisory is a research agency that conducts the Brand Trust Survey in India.