Tesco Personal Finance, Sainsbury’s Bank and Marks & Spencer Money all outperformed the big four retail banks in terms of perceived fairness, when measured against the criteria developed by insight agency Brandspeak.
With the economic crisis causing a loss of confidence in high street banks, consumers are focussing on supermarkets for not only their weekly shopping but also their financial services, according to Brandspeak’s customer provider fairness survey.
According to the survey, nearly half of people surveyed felt that supermarkets have become fairer over the past five years. Sainsbury’s has taken the top slot with 87% of those people who use the supermarket rating the household brand as being committed to treating its customers fairly.
Over the last five years key elements of the personal finance industry has been seen to become increasingly less fair with ‘unnecessary’ and inflated charges being the top fairness criteria for 40% of people surveyed. In comparison, supermarkets have become fairer in the eyes of the consumer.
With charges and costs dictating consumers’ purchase agenda, Tesco also fared well as 82% of its customers felt the brand’s aims were aligned to their own and acted in the customers best interests.
Jeremy Braune, managing director of Brandspeak, said: “Given the global and domestic issues of the past two years it is no wonder that corporate fairness has become such an important issue for consumers. By demonstrating fairness on the consumers’ terms, through aggressive pricing and individual reward, it should be no surprise that consumers are increasingly willing to entrust their savings to the same brand from which they buy their weekly shopping.
“With perceptions that fairness within the banking sector is in decline there is a great opportunity for the supermarkets to further seize the initiative and grow their share of the market.”