Trust is a big word in modern retail. In the information-rich world we live in, consumers no longer take everything they are told at face value. They investigate and interrogate for themselves, researching brand and product details, reading reviews and discussing on social media before they decide to make a purchase.

That’s a good thing. But it also sets a new kind of challenge for brands. It’s no longer enough to be convincing. You have to be able to back it up to be trustworthy. 70% of consumers now say it’s important that they can trust a brand that they buy from.

But on the flip side of every challenge, there is opportunity. 46% of people say they are happy to spend more purchasing from brands they trust rather than get a better deal with a brand they don’t.

Brand trust is built on several different foundations. It depends on giving customers a high quality experience that they can trust they will receive time and time again. It depends on fair pricing, especially when times are tough economically.

But above all else, it depends on transparency. As mentioned, there is a lot of information available to consumers these days. If you say one thing and then they find out that’s not exactly true, that’s a surefire way to destroy trust.

The brands and retailers that win on trust are those that are most transparent when it comes to sharing information with customers. But that raises the question – how do you share it? Online, the ready availability of information is a given. It’s the digital world that has driven the information revolution, after all.

But what about in store, when a customer is standing browsing a shelf with a dozen questions running through their head about whether it’s the right product for them? How do you make the information they are looking for readily available and transparent then?

That’s where kiosks come in.

The value of information

In the past, in-store retail has had to rely on product labelling to share information with customers. But the level of detail consumers are looking for these days goes way beyond what you can fit on a packet.

Consumers want and expect businesses to be open and transparent about where their products are coming from. They want to know how they are made, what is in them, and how they stack up against statutory and industry standards. They want to know about carbon footprint and environmental impact.

With products like foodstuffs, people want to know about ingredients, allergens and nutritional values. In sectors like cosmetics and healthcare, they want to know about potential risks and side effects. With machinery, they want safety information.

Much of the focus on the role kiosks have to play in retail hones in on them offering an alternative checkout option. An option that taps into the do-it-yourself ethos that many consumers have nowadays, and brings benefits like shorter wait times and freeing up staff from having to sit at the cashier’s desk all day.

But kiosks offer much more than self-service transaction processing. Arguably the biggest value kiosks bring to a store is their ability to act as information points. Connect them to your business’s website, connect them to the internet, upload brochures and manuals and certifications, and you hand customers an easy, accessible way to look up all the information they could ever want.

If you are wondering how you can make your retail business more transparent and provide your customers with the level of information that wins their trust, you have your answer right there. With kiosks, you can readily share more information than any sales assistant could ever be expected to remember, and more detail than you can ever fit on a label.