Consumer trust is a crucial factor in your brand’s long-term success. Your customers’ perception of your business not only influences their decision to buy today, but it also affects future shopping behavior, product and brand reviews, and your reputation among other shoppers.
The Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) enables trading partners to globally share trusted product content that bolsters your brand and customer sentiment. Read on to explore how accurate and transparent product information facilitated by the GDSN can build consumer trust and loyalty among consumers.
The Necessity of the GDSN in a Competitive Global Market
The GDSN connects suppliers with retailers, operators, providers, distributors and other product content recipients. Every item in the GDSN receives an identification code that holds essential product data like including color, category, size, weight, and shipping and delivery logistics. The GDSN creates a universal language between retailers, distributors and trading partners. Data is disbursed in real time, ensuring accuracy and consistency across every sales channel.
When a supplier updates product data, the changes are instant for all trading partners and all places where a consumer might buy the item. Through data pools, you can access the GDSN’s worldwide network of trading partners, enabling you to sell your product virtually anywhere.
The Crushing Impact of Inaccurate Product Information
You can’t overstate the influence of product data on your retail sales in-store, online and in the omnichannel space we’re in today. Consumers rely on accurate, transparent product information to make their purchase choices everywhere they shop. In research for The State of Product Experience, we found that 75% of consumers think less of a brand if products are not accurately represented online. But that same amount also said they would be more likely to return to a brand or store first if they’re easily able to find all the product information they want. The product experience can chase away customers—or keep them coming back time and again.
If your product data, including descriptions, comparison tables, how-to-videos, specs and other rich content, falls short of consumer expectations, they will click to the next page. You must provide an ample volume of high-quality, accurate product content that not only addresses basic product information but also preemptively answers consumer questions. If you don’t, shoppers will shop elsewhere with brands that meet their content demands.
Your content is the foundation of consumer trust. Accuracy and consistency across all channels and all trading partners are essential, so you need a content delivery mechanism that ensures accurate, instant product information distribution.
The GDSN helps ensure your product data is delivered to your trading partners so you can avoid content issues that negatively affect your reputation, sales and bottom line.
How Legacy GDSN Solutions Fall Short of Modern Demands
Though now over 20 years old, the GDSN remains an indispensable foundation for product data exchange and commercial operations. However, the way it has often been used reflects patterns designed for a slower, simpler marketplace. Commerce is accelerating, but the infrastructure powering product data management and transfer hasn’t kept up, and many legacy GDSN solutions struggle to keep up with the demands of the modern consumer and a fast-changing market.
Data requirements have exploded. Regulatory mandates, retailer‑specific rules, and AI‑driven discovery now demand structured, validated, and complete data—at scale. Legacy datapools, originally tuned for simple SKUs, struggle with complex hierarchies, product variations, and coordinated global rollouts.
Operational drag from manual rework. Endless CIC rejection cycles and duplicate submissions waste time, erode trust, and delay speed‑to‑market—precisely when consumers expect up‑to‑date, relevant product information from their first interaction onward.
Fragmented activation across the digital shelf. Core item data, regulatory attributes, and rich content often live in silos, creating inconsistencies and costly errors that shoppers notice as they research and compare across sites and channels. In an omnichannel reality, those inconsistencies undermine the consistent experience brands must deliver at every touchpoint.
Rising retailer expectations for data quality. Retailers increasingly expect high‑accuracy, continuous readiness, and clean activation flows of product content. When legacy data pools can’t meet that bar, the result is more rejections, cleanup cycles, and delays; exactly the friction today’s shoppers won’t tolerate.
The takeaway: Keep the GDSN as the real‑time backbone for trusted content, but modernize how it’s leveraged. Data models and activation workflows need to be modernized and data pools consolidated so information is accurate, complete, and consistent the first time, everywhere it’s needed: at the shelf, in the warehouse, or on a customs form.
Enhancing the Customer Experience to Build Loyalty and Trust
When consumers shop, they consider more than just the product. Their experiences with your brand shape their perception of your products and company and their relationship with you. In our 2025 Omnichannel Shopping Benchmarks report, we found that a growing number of shoppers (86%) now consider quality product information more influential on a purchase decision than brand recognition.
Earning customer loyalty extends beyond the transaction. Building trust and gaining lifetime customers requires brands to deliver exceptional customer experiences for all shoppers at every stage of the buyer’s journey, including your existing customers.
Customer retention should be a priority for any business: repeat customers spend more (increasing revenue) without increasing customer acquisition costs. They often enhance your marketing strategy with positive reviews, social sharing, and word-of-mouth recommendations.
If you want to reap the benefits of lifetime customers, you must proactively foster brand loyalty. You do so in part by delivering consistent, quality content experiences across every channel and interaction with shoppers.
The GDSN helps deliver a positive customer experience from the first interaction with your products. When a consumer’s initial encounter with your brand includes accurate, up-to-date, relevant and helpful product information, they have good reason to trust your brand and continue their journey toward purchase.
Information Accuracy in Omnichannel Retail
Consumers build trust with a brand or product through extensive online research, and product and brand research has never been more convenient or accessible.
Your shoppers are online comparing your products against your competition both in-store and online. Even shoppers who prefer in-person shopping compare products through research on their smartphones. Your product content matters in omnichannel retail, and the GDSN helps you ensure a consistent experience at every customer touchpoint.
Brands must deliver consistent content across every site they sell to cultivate consumer trust throughout their journey to purchase.
Promoting Product Data Transparency and Traceability
Product transparency and traceability have become increasingly important to consumers. The GDSN ensures real-time data communication, empowering organizations with complete end-to-end visibility and providing a clear view of all inventories. Transparency allows brands to identify procurement sources for consumers, so they can know where their products come from.
Traceability is an essential component of your product content strategy since sustainability and ethical practices are now significant factors in many consumers’ purchase decisions. The GDSN helps brands provide that data so consumers can know how their purchases are sourced, giving them certainty that their shopping choices reflect their values.
SmartLabel and the GDSN
Consumers demand greater transparency from the brands they shop, and this is especially true of food brands. Shoppers are inclined to trust and shop brands that provide more in-depth product content beyond what’s provided on the package label.
SmartLabel gathers GDSN data to provide full transparency for food and grocery products. The tool gives shoppers a thorough understanding of your product by providing a single source of product data.
SmartLabel enhances the buying experience, going above and beyond product data requirements to cultivate trust and build customer loyalty.
Conclusion
The GDSN allows companies, consumers, and retailers to benefit from instant, accurate, and consistent product information. Automated content delivery ensures every customer interaction with your product content is the same; there is no need for your teams to manually upload or audit data with each trading partner. It allows for efficient digital optimization, lowering the time it takes for new experiences to go live online, helping you attract consumers.
Syndigo, now combined with 1WorldSync, delivers the industry’s most trusted and advanced GDSN datapool, built for today’s complex, fast-moving commerce. Unlike legacy solutions, Syndigo ensures instant, accurate, and consistent product information across every channel and trading partner, helping brands meet rising retailer and consumer expectations for data quality, transparency, and traceability. With the highest publication success rates, proactive AI-driven validation, and global expertise, Syndigo empowers you to accelerate speed-to-market, reduce operational costs, and build lasting consumer trust.
