Companies’ good reputation on the internet

According to Nielsen vice president for reputation management Wendy Salomon, a company’s good reputation is more and more often considered to be one of its most important assets. From this point of view the internet is increasingly important. International experience is that companies need to be active in urging their customers to share their opinion on their products and services with other consumers online. Research by Nielsen showed that 90 percent of consumers trust friends’ opinion when they have to make purchasing decisions and 70 percent also trust customer evaluations they read online. In Hungary 54 percent of consumers have already visited websites where they have either expressed their positive opinion on goods or services or they have participated in some kind of discussion about them (the European average is 57 percent). 45 percent have done this in social media, 21 percent on brand manufacturer websites and 14 percent on retail companies’ websites. The majority of these consumers posted positive or neutral opinions. It is also important that 54 percent of them got polite and/or helpful replies to these from manufacturers, retailers or other consumers