In Southeast Asia Big Tech’s Reputation Only Gets It Through the Door.

Across Southeast Asia, digital platforms are woven into daily life. People use them to talk to friends, order dinner, hail rides, shop, work, bank, and pass the time. But daily use does not mean consumers trust the company behind the platform with something more consequential or that they will follow it into every new product it chooses to launch.

Across the region, large tech companies are pushing well beyond the businesses that first made them successful, with messaging apps expanding into payments, e-commerce platforms offering credit, and social networks adding shopping, identity checks, and automated services. The logic is simple enough: millions of existing users should make the next product easier to sell.

Yet, according to a recent study by Kadence and Vero, frequent use does not necessarily signal trust. Among 3,091 consumers surveyed across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines, 79% said they used social media every day, yet it still recorded the lowest trust score among the ten technology categories examined.

The study also found that consumers across the region do not judge technology companies in the same way. When asked what most strongly proved that a company could be trusted, only 9% chose reputation and leadership, while just 4% pointed to recommendations from people they knew. Respondents placed greater weight on a company’s record, regulatory approval, clear explanations of how data would be used, and independent audits or certifications.

Even those preferences varied by market. In Indonesia, 43% said a clear explanation of how their data would be used and controlled was the strongest proof of trust; in Singapore, 36% said the same. After a major technology incident, however, the two markets diverged. In Singapore, 43% would place the greatest trust in a government authority’s explanation. In Indonesia, 51% would turn to an independent cybersecurity expert, compared with 22% who would trust a government authority most.

The differences were just as pronounced in how consumers said they would respond to a serious data breach. In the Philippines, 56% said they would stop using the service immediately. Half of the Malaysian respondents and 48% of those in Singapore said the same. Consumers in Indonesia and Vietnam were more likely to pause and wait for evidence of improvement, with 54% and 49%, respectively, choosing that response.

Our findings reveal not one Southeast Asian technology market, but six markets with different thresholds for trust, different sources of authority, and different reactions when trust is broken.

Trust must be researched at the product level

The lesson for tech companies is not that brand reputation has become irrelevant. A familiar name can still attract attention, reduce customer acquisition costs, and make people more willing to consider a new offer. What it cannot do is settle the question of whether they will accept the risks attached to that offer.

That question has to be examined at both the product and market levels. A messaging service moving into payments is not simply asking customers to adopt another feature. It is asking them to accept a different relationship with the company - one involving money, identity, fraud, and the possibility of financial loss. An e-commerce platform entering lending is making an even larger leap. Customers who trust it to deliver a package may not be comfortable with it assessing their income, spending, or creditworthiness.

Companies often recognize these differences operationally but fail to account for them in their research. Product teams test demand, usability, pricing, and likely adoption, while trust is reduced to a broad measure of corporate reputation. The result can be an encouraging but incomplete picture: customers may know the brand, understand the proposition, and still decide the product is not for them.

Product-level research exposes that gap before a company commits to launch. It identifies where the proposition creates resistance, what customers believe could go wrong, and whether the promised benefit justifies the data, access, or control they are being asked to give up.

The question is not whether consumers trust the company, but whether they trust it to take on this particular role.

Regional averages can hide why a product launch will fail

Our study findings also show the danger of treating Southeast Asia as a single technology market.

Companies may test one regional proposition and then localize the campaign through language, imagery, and media. But the more consequential differences often sit beneath the message: what consumers consider credible evidence, which institutions they trust, and who they expect to take responsibility when something goes wrong.

Singapore and Indonesia make this point clearly. Consumers in both markets valued clear explanations of how their data would be used and controlled. Yet after a major technology incident, Singaporean consumers were most likely to trust a government authority, while those in Indonesia strongly preferred an independent cybersecurity expert.

A single regional assurance strategy is therefore unlikely to carry equal weight across the region. The same regulatory endorsement, expert certification, spokesperson, or local partner may reassure consumers in one market and leave those in another unconvinced.

Country-level market research reveals not only whether consumers are hesitant, but what is driving that hesitation and what evidence would change their view. In one market, regulatory approval may provide the strongest reassurance. In another, consumers may want independent technical verification, a trusted local partner, or access to human support.

Those differences reach well beyond the campaign itself, shaping product design, partnership strategy, launch planning, and crisis response. If companies wait until launch to uncover them, they may already have committed to a product, operating model, and market strategy built on the wrong assumptions.

Research the risk consumers see, not only the benefit brands offer

New products are usually developed around a consumer benefit: faster approval, easier payment, greater personalization, fewer steps, or more automation. But customers do not assess that benefit in isolation. They weigh it against what the company is asking in return.

Connecting a financial account may make an application faster, but it also exposes more of the customer’s financial life. Allowing a platform to verify identity may reduce fraud, but it also requires customers to submit documents that could be difficult to replace if compromised. An automated service may offer speed and consistency while leaving users uncertain about how decisions are made or how to challenge them.

Conventional concept testing can miss this tension when it concentrates on appeal, relevance, and purchase intent. Consumers may like the benefit while remaining uneasy about the data collected, the decisions being made, or the consequences if something goes wrong.

Research must establish where that trade-off breaks down and whether the answer lies in clearer communication or a change to the product itself—from collecting less data and giving customers more control to adding human review or independent oversight.

The purpose of the research is not to find more persuasive language for the same proposition. It is to determine whether the proposition has earned the confidence it requires.

Trust is a market-entry decision

For tech brands expanding across Southeast Asia, the larger lesson is that trust cannot be treated as a brand metric or a communications problem. It is a condition of market entry.

A company may have millions of users, strong awareness, and a successful product elsewhere in the region, but none of that answers the question that matters most: whether consumers in this market will accept this company in this role, handling this information, under these conditions.

That is why trust research belongs at the beginning of the investment decision, not at the end of the campaign process. It should shape how much data a product collects, where human oversight is required, which partnerships carry credibility, what safeguards must be visible, and whether the company should enter the market at all.

For tech execs, the risk is straightforward. A company that mistakes familiarity for trust may build the wrong product, choose the wrong partner, make the wrong assurances, and discover the problem only after the capital has been committed.

Market research has a larger role than making a launch message more persuasive. It establishes whether the company has permission to enter the market in the first place, what that permission depends on, and how quickly it can disappear.

Across Southeast Asia, reputation may open the door. Whether the company is allowed any further depends on how well it has understood the market on the other side.

Download Southeast Asia’s Trust in Tech for regional trust scores, country comparisons, market profiles, and the outlook for technology adoption across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines.