You can’t put all activewear consumers under one umbrella: Nike shoppers value equality, tolerance and acceptance, while Under Armour customers look to tradition and caring for others. 

Consumers today often make decisions that go far beyond basic product attributes. Values drive their personal interactions –– and their purchasing decisions. 

“Personal values form the stable lens through which a consumer views the world,” explains psychologist Thomas Lacki, Ph.D., senior fellow, research with Resonate, a marketing research intelligence firm that powers B2C marketing. 

“Values reflect consumers’ priorities, guide how decisions are made, and motivate actions. Simply put, values encapsulate the ‘why’ behind the ‘buy’ and enable a marketer to connect to the central core of consumers,” he continues. 

Resonate’s study, “Changes in Consumers’ Personal Values during the Coronavirus Crisis,” details just how much those consumer values have shifted pre-Covid to now. These values are critical for brands to understand the why that drives the buy. 

“Everything starts with humans,” Resonate CMO Ericka McCoy states. “The best relationships between brands and consumers, just like any other relationship, start with understanding. So if a brand better understands its consumers, it can have a better relationship with them.” 

It’s this deeper understanding that helps brands like Nike uncover what makes their target audience unique. A Nike ad focused on equality and tolerance, for example, the Colin Kaepernick Nike ad, will resonate with their audience and result in a successful brand-consumer values alignment. And, it’s this alignment that’s essential, “Our research shows that a brand can’t just adopt a set of values just because they want to adopt a set of values,” McCoy says. “A brand has to be authentic in their values.” 

Read the entire article on Forbes for more information on the specific consumer values increasing now, as well as more examples detailing the values-driven audiences behind major corporations.