Values
During the height of our COVID fears, when we were bleaching anything we brought into our homes, there were a series of photos and news stories that told us a lot about how brand values resonate at scale.
The stories, like this one from the Wall Street Journal, and photos showed us that shelf space devoted to Clorox and Lysol was often empty while shelf space devoted to “greener” products, like Seventh Generation, was still full.
In other words, we were actively avoiding green products when our fears of germs were at their highest.
We recalled those stories and images earlier this week, when Shopify released its Future of Commerce report.
In the intro, Shopify writes:
Consumers are 4x more likely to purchase from a company with strong brand values. And a whopping 77% are concerned about the environmental impact of the products they buy.
They’re willing to spend more money and accept slower shipping times—for the right brand.
This is a nice story, but rarely true.
As consumers, we lie to ourselves. We like to think our purchase habits align to our values. We self-report that they do.
But then we walk into Target or Walmart or Kroger with our goal of keeping ourselves and families safe and we ignore the Seventh Generation products, even though 77% of us told Shopify that we care about the environmental impact of the products we buy.
Maybe we care. Maybe we value certain things and want to see those values being expressed by brands.
But, more often than not, we don’t get to make decisions in a vacuum, without weighing those values against other values. And when those values do compete, we often don’t care enough to change our behavior.