In light of the importance given to the trust in today's environment, The Brand Trust Report, India Study, 2014 (BTR 2014), Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the nation, emerged as the Most Trusted personality in India. In a list of twenty, a fairly large number belong to the film fraternity and sports, Amitabh Bachchan ranks second in the overall list, moving up from the 6th Most Trusted personality in 2013. The legendary thespian is followed by the Shahrukh Khan ranked 3rd and Sachin Tendulkar, the recently retired master-blaster, who comes a close fourth. In addition to this the report lists several other Individuals and ranging from business, sports, cinema, and spirituality. TRA, a Comniscient Group Company, is the publisher of BTR 2014 which lists 1200 brands from 284 categories this year. This year lists 14 male personalities and 6 female personalities in the category.
Among the personalities, new entrant in the list Petra Ecclestone, British-Croatian heiress, model, fashion designer and socialite, makes a surprise entry at 5th position.
Salman Khan who ranked 3rd in 2013, has fallen to the 6th Most Trusted personality, followed by Mithun Chakraborthy at 7th place. Captain of the Indian cricket team, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, and former captain Sourav Ganguly rank at 8th and 9th position. Another eminent sports personality PT Usha draws the top 10 Most Trusted Personalities to a close.
N. Chandramouli, CEO, TRA, said, "The dynamic nature of trust is visible from the changes in the trust that people display on personalities. Trust is the most important and basic platform on which all exchanges are dependent, and we are most amenable to demonstrate trust on other humans. However, this year there were only twenty personality brands listed as against thirty-five last year, showing a diminished Capacity to Trust' among Indians."
Aamir Khan, whose trust was previously third in 2013 , came 11thin BTR 2014, followed by Ratan Tata, the first and only personality listed under the business category in both years. Katrina Kaif is the first female cinema personality to be listed at 13th rank, followed by Virat Kohli who has for long now been talked about as the successor to Dhoni.
Indian tennis legend Sania Mirza ranks 15th, being one of the two iconic sports women to be listed. Mother Teresa, Kapil Dev and Swami Vivekananda rank 16th, 17th and 18th respectively. Sridevi ranks 19th in the list and the only music personality to be listed AR Rehman, closes the list at rank 20.
The Brand Trust Report, India Study, 2014 (ISBN:978-81-920823-6-3), the fourth in the series, is the result of a primary research based on the proprietary 61-component Trust Matrix. This year's research was conducted among 2500 consumer-influencers across 16 cities, and generated nearly 5 million datapoints and 20000 brands, making it the most intensive study on Brand Trust across the globe.
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