Nivea, Nokia and Nationwide: Trusted In The UK

Europe’s biggest all-singing, all-dancing consumer poll, the Readers’ Digest Trusted Brands survey, has released its results for 2009.

Research is conducted in 16 countries to find the top 20 “Brand Specifics” that are common to all countries.  There’s also a “Local Categories” list where each country includes 20 top brands of their own choice.

And so to the results….drum roll, please…

Here in the UK, Nationwide has overtaken Halifax as the most trusted mortgage lender while British Gas topped the list as best utility provider.

Our favourite household cleaning product is Flash, which we probably buy from our top retailer, Tesco, along with our Colgate, Flora and Sure deodorant.

And, since it’s almost Easter, we can’t forget chocolate: Cadbury’s came out as the UK’s favourite choice of confectionary.

Across all 16 countries, Nivea and Nokia hit the number one spots for skin care and mobile phone handset; both brands have been voted in first place by all countries since the survey began in 2001.

Visa is the credit card of choice in 14 countries; Canon the top brand of camera in 13; and Kellogg’s serve up the best cereals in 10.

The survey also threw up some weird little peculiarities according to country.

Russia’s local categories, for example, included seed oil, shoe care - and diarrhoea remedy.

Portugal, on the other hand, voted for favourite laxative and throat analgesic.

In Finland, they had a category for best ‘functional food’. Eh, hello? Isn’t that the ultimate point of food?

Meanwhile, over in the Netherlands, they were busy rating bicycles, dating sites…and beds.  You gotta love the Dutch.