“People no longer consume brands; they edit them and their communications, choosing a select number to interact with”

Research carried out by branding consultancy Creston Unlimited has identified that just 8 emotional dimensions drive 83% of all consumer brand purchasing decisions

– with Pleasure being the most important one by far, accounting for almost a quarter of all brand choices.

This means that, more than anything else, brands enrich people’s lives by offering them fun and indulgence, with other, more rational emotional drivers such as Effectiveness and Saving driving far fewer brand choices. The hierarchy in terms of which emotions drive brand choice overall across the population is as follows:

ZOOM

To receive a full copy of Creston Unlimited’s survey findings please email us.

However, the research – carried out by Creston Unlimited in conjunction with ICM and comprising in-depth qualitative interviews followed up by a quantitative study amongst over 3,500 UK adults – also identified that the hierarchy and strength of brand dimensions, in terms of how they enrich lives, can change significantly for different sub groups of the UK adult population.

When indexing men and women against the total sample, the emotional value with which brands enrich women’s lives was greater across every dimension compared to men. This suggests that a brand targeted at men has to work harder to enrich men’s lives than a female orientated one. However, it was also interesting to see that the hierarchy of brand dimensions of men versus women were also different.

Relative importance of brand dimensions for men and women in driving brand decisions

For men, Pleasure was still the most important dimension, driving 26% of all brand purchasing decisions; but Status ranked as the second greatest dimension at 16%, rising to 34% for young men aged 18-24. The research also identified that there were strong links between Status and other dimensions and that this correlation can be very important in terms of building the right kind of Status for the market you are targeting as consumers whose Status is fuelled by Belonging to the cool group, is quite different from Status fuelled by Individuality, for instance.

For women, the key brand dimension for success is Confidence, accounting for 22% of brand decisions. Women like brands to enrich their lives by making them feel safe on several levels – functionally, socially and emotionally. Brands can therefore create strong connections with women by offering different facets of brand Confidence, such as physical safety as offered by Volvo or Domestos, social safety as offered by Sanpro or air freshener brands. Another definition of Confidence is social conformity and acceptability, such as offering the right choice of breakfast cereal when guests come to stay.

It also seems that the level of enrichment brands offer consumers varies according to the presence of children and personal status. For instance, it appears that brands are failing to enrich the lives of people who are married or co-habiting and have no children at home. For this group, brand enrichment levels are below average for every dimension. However, the reverse is true for single parents, for whom brands bring above average levels of enrichment, especially on dimensions such as Pleasure, Status and Belonging, suggesting a need for escapism, or reconnection with the wider world. With single mums or dads rarely being the heroes in advertising, there appears to be an opportunity to forge greater connections by tapping into these deep emotions.

Finally, the survey identified that the level of enrichment brands provide varies significantly according to income. Individuals earning £15,000 or less gain significantly more emotional value from buying brands than the better off, with brands offering high levels of enrichment to poorer women especially. Interestingly, for this group, Savings remains one of the lowest drivers for their brand decisions, with other dimensions such as Pleasure, Belonging and Responsibility scoring highly, suggesting that brands offer a form of escape, reconnection and validation.

Conversely, brands do surprisingly little to enrich the wealthiest men, with every brand dimension offering below average enrichment. Interestingly, it is only on the most functional level, Effectiveness, that men get anything close to the average levels of brand enrichment that other consumers enjoy. These findings suggest that a watch brand explaining the workings of the mechanism, or a car brand that highlights what’s under the bonnet, and which therefore underpins luxury with Effectiveness may create higher levels of engagement.

Index Comparison of men and women according to individual earnings

John Crowther, Managing Partner at Creston Unlimited, concludes: “These days, the amount of choice available to consumers is mindboggling. In a typical large supermarket there are 20-30,000 different products and the average person sees over 1,000 ads a day. People therefore no longer consume brands; they edit them and their communications, choosing a select number to interact with. To make it through the editorial cut, brands need to reward consumers in a way that enriches their lives.

“With brands all effectively competing for the same pound, we carried out this research to identify whether there was a way to measure brand enrichment that would be universal across brand categories, providing a long-term platform for brands to overcome consumer editing. That’s what the eight dimensions do. Using these dimensions through our brand measurement tool CUBE (Creston Unlimited Brand Enrichment), brands can see how well, or badly, both they and their competitors enrich consumers’ lives and use this knowledge to create better differentiation and stronger engagement. The differences in women compared to men, and also between consumers at different lifestages and income levels, is something that brands need to understand and react to if they want to be relevant to today’s consumer.”

To receive a full copy of Creston Unlimited’s survey findings please email us.