Coles, Woolworths continues fall from grace to now be among nation’s top three distrusted brands

Coles and Woolworths have continued their fall from grace to now be among the nation’s top three most distrusted brands.

In mid-2023, the supermarket giants held the top two spots as the nation’s most trusted companies. Woolworths and Coles have now tanked to sit second and third least trusted brands in Roy Morgan’s latest risk monitor survey for the September quarter.

Both have lost well over 200 places in the trust rankings compared with a year ago.

The supermarket majors sit only behind embattled Optus, with the Singaporean-owned telco giant once again named Australia’s most distrusted brand for a sixth consecutive quarter.

It comes as Coles and Woolworths face increasing regulatory scrutiny.

The competition watchdog in late September launched a legal attack against both supermarkets for allegedly tricking consumers with fake discounts on hundreds of products.

Hardware giant Bunnings also made it a year in the top spot of most trusted brands this quarter, despite the Privacy Commissioner last month finding it had breached privacy rules by trialling facial recognition at some of its stores.

“A year ago, Bunnings was ranked as Australia’s second most trusted brand — splitting the two major supermarkets Woolworths (first) and Coles (third) on the podium,” Roy Morgan chief executive Michele Levine said.

“Since then, the two supermarkets have fallen away significantly and are now ranked within the three most distrusted brands — just behind Optus — Australia’s most distrusted brand for a sixth consecutive quarter.”

Behind Bunnings was an unchanged top six including German supermarket Aldi, Kmart, Toyota, Apple and Australia Post.

Rounding out the 10 most distrusted brands are Qantas; Facebook parent company Meta; Telstra; News Corp; ultra-cheap fashion retailer Temu; social media X, formerly Twitter; and TikTok.

Roy Morgan surveys about 2000 Australians every month to measure levels of trust and distrust of around 1000 brands across 27 industries.