LONDON: British marketers should consider promoting brand values such as "pleasure", "confidence" and "status" to make an impact with consumers, new research has suggested.

Creston Unlimited, the brand consultancy, and ICM, the panel specialists, polled 3,500 adults to discuss their buying habits. This built on qualitative interviews identifying the main influences in this area.

The report discovered that "pleasure" was the most important factor in the decisions, posting a total of 23%, ahead of "confidence" on 17% and "status" on 14%, matching the score recorded by "responsibility".

"Effectiveness" registered 11% on the same measure, with "individuality" on 9%, making a "saving" on 7% and enjoying a feeling of "belonging" on 5%.

In combination, these eight areas were reported to shape 83% of purchases among shoppers, although the exact role played by each component tended to vary by sector.

Leading financial services brands, for example, only logged an average of 3.3 points out of ten in terms of "pleasure". This is an expected result for a comparatively low involvement category.

By contrast, "effectiveness" ratings reached 7.5 points and "saving" received 6.7 points, declining to 3.9 points for achieving a sense of "status" and 3.6 points for "belonging".

Mobile operators generated 4.3 points for "pleasure", a figure that rose to 5.1 points, an industry high, when looking at O2, the network provider, which bettered the segment norm on all eight metrics.

Results also varied on demographic criteria, as shown by the fact that women earning under £15,000 per year were 89% more likely than the norm to derive "pleasure" brands.

By contrast, couples who were living together but had no children saw their "pleasure" totals fall 13% below the average, the analysis revealed.

Young men were 115% more likely to believe brands could improve their "status", and exhibited a 51% greater probability to agree owning a specific product encouraged "responsibility".

Male consumers earning more than £50,000 a year and 45–64 year old men felt less "enriched" by brands overall, however. Affluent women also only beat the norm for securing "pleasure" and "status".

Data sourced from Marketing Week; additional content by Warc staff