Business trends of the future: Trust to be a major commodity – expert

There's a cartoon doing the rounds on Facebook that looks something like this: a bank executive holding a big bag of money in one hand and a cigar in the other refers to a robber holding up a bank teller as an "amateur". The scene encapsulates perfectly the shift in sentiment towards big business in recent years as executives have claimed ever greater portions of the pie while their customers and taxpayers have suffered financially in one way or another.

Of course, it's not just bank executives who have been guilty of such sins. As leading South African trends analyst Dion Chang reminds us in this excellent piece, supermarkets have been selling us the meat of different animals from the ones represented on the packaging and internet giants have been sharing our private information with others without us knowing.

These deeds haven't negatively impacted on executive pay packages, but there are signs that businesses are going to have to do more to regain the trust of their customers. According to Dion, trust will be a major commodity, with unexpected opportunities around this development for entrepreneurs. He provides examples of how a backlash against all this abuse of our trust is creating money-making streams for astute business players. "Trust is the new commodity," says Dion, so "learn how to trade with it". – JC

Business trends of the future: The business of distrust.

By Dion Chang

Who can you trust? This is the question most people are asking, and the answer is – unfortunately – almost no one. In the last five years consumer trust has been slowly and steadily eroded and there seems to be no escape.

It started in 2008 with the global financial crisis. Many people lost not only their life savings, but also their jobs. They watched helplessly as the institutions that ignited the meltdown receive government bailouts, after which the CEO's promptly awarded themselves bonuses. It rubbed salt into a very fresh wound. From there on our levels of cynicism has risen proportionately to decreasing levels of trust, and it is only when you look back do you realise how wary we have become – and with good reason.

As consumers, and citizens, we have been bombarded with irrefutable evidence that we've been consistently hoodwinked and lied to, by brands, service providers and governments. The News Of The World phone hacking scandal added a layer of distrust for the media. The horsemeat food scandal made us dubious about what we are really eating. Cyber crimes like phishing and identity theft have made us wary of transacting in cyberspace. The use of our data on social media platforms has made us think twice about what we share online. We've discovered that our sports hero's are not that heroic, and that besides scandals involving performance-enhancing drugs we also hear that cricket and soccer matches have been fixed anyway.

We've never trusted governments, but to find out that they are not only spying on each other (email monitoring at the G20 summit), and worse, that our trusted service providers like Google and Facebook (amongst others) did actually allow America's NSA (National Security Agency) access to their – or should that be, our – data, ensures that our levels of distrust are so high that we simply don't take anything at face value any longer. It's no wonder that research is showing that the only people we trust, when recommending brands or products, are our family and friends – and even then, only in that order.

Unsurprisingly, there has been a very real backlash to this distrust, which has manifested in a slew of anti-trust products. For example, food scandals in China, from milk to meat products, have given rise to a new iPhone app called The China Survival Guide. The app tracks food scandals around the country and sends warnings about products, to users. The app was downloaded over 200,000 times in its first week, which tells you not only how neurotic people are, but also the new need for anti-trust products.

In America there is already a company producing wallets that shield your credit cards from RFID (radio frequency identification) scanners because while these new embedded chips might make for easy transactions, but they also allow anyone to walk past you with a scanner and steal your credit card details without you knowing. Over in Japan the first "privacy visor" is being developed. This visor is designed to block any facial recognition software, which is soon to be used in retail environments to match your likes and dislikes by riffling through your social media accounts. Worried yet?

Retailers and brands, as well as advertising agencies, now face an uphill battle to sell consumers, not only new products, but more importantly, a brand promise. In the meantime quick thinking entrepreneurs should be looking at ways and means to stem the tide of distrust with innovative anti-trust products. Trust, is the new commodity. Learn how to trade with it.

This article was first published in Sawubona, SAA's award winning in-flight magazine.

Dion Chang is the founder of Flux Trends. For more business trends visit: www.fluxtrends.com