Are Your Customers as Purpose-Led as You’d Hope?
A Stanford study published in May 2025 tracked real purchasing decisions and found that despite 78% of consumers claiming sustainability was personally important to them, "package size, ingredients, and brand name are much bigger drivers of purchases than sustainability labels." What people say in surveys and what they do at checkout are two very different things.
PwC's Voice of the Consumer data tells the same story: the share of consumers willing to pay a sustainability premium dropped year-on-year as cost-of-living pressures bit. And of those who say they would pay more for ethical brands, only 8% are both highly willing and highly committed in practice.
This isn't a failure of values. It's just how humans behave when money is tight. The better product at the better price wins.
Meanwhile, inside marketing teams, every pound is under the microscope. NIQ research from 2025 found that belief in brand purpose as a meaningful marketing pillar is "in sharp decline," with CMOs under rising pressure to prove direct, measurable returns. Brand-building budgets - the traditional home of purpose-driven storytelling - are getting squeezed in favour of performance channels that can show a clear ROAS.
Purpose-led brands caught between these forces often end up in a vacuum: talking loudly about their values to an audience that already agrees with them, while their competitors run rings around them on search visibility, pricing, and conversion. The businesses worth studying aren't the ones shouting loudest about their values. They built something excellent first, then used purpose to add depth.
Patagonia succeeds not because of its activism, but because it makes genuinely great outdoor gear. "Don't Buy This Jacket" only works as a campaign because the product already earns it.
Gymshark built a $1.6 billion brand without a purpose narrative in sight. The founder couldn't find gym clothes that fit — so he made better ones. Community, belonging, and values emerged from the product and the customer.
Oatly has carbon labelling on its packaging and a real sustainability story. But it grew because it tasted better and frothed better for coffee. The ethics are a reassurance. The flavour is the reason.
All three compete hard on performance — search, social, conversion, retention. Purpose amplifies their marketing. It doesn't replace it:
Product first. Does it work? Is it competitive on quality and price? If not, no purpose story will save it.
Performance second. Be visible. Optimise conversion. Run marketing like a business that needs to grow, because it does.
Purpose third, but only if it's real. If your values are genuinely embedded in how you operate, communicate them as proof, not as positioning. Customers in 2026 are sophisticated enough to find the gap between claim and reality.
Most customers don't care about your brand values as much as you do. That's not cynical, it's just the reality of how people make decisions. Get into their consideration set on product and price first. Then your purpose becomes the story they tell themselves for choosing you. It becomes loyalty, not a one-off transaction.
Sources: Stanford Report, May 2025 · PwC Voice of the Consumer Survey, 2024 · Marketing Dive / NIQ, 2025 · Vivify Marketing / Purpose-Washing, 2024 · Gymshark Marketing Strategy, Tactic One