Your favorite political strategists are back to give empirical insights on elections brands. Yes, that’s right. We can’t be the only ones who are obsessed with political consumer guessing games (partisan fridges, cuisines, clothing, and our favorite–parenting). 

Now that we’ve established that 10% of Americans are truly Independent and poked holes in the median voter theory, what does all of this mean for consumer brands? 

Here’s the BLUF (bottom-line up-front for you not in the acronym know): being ‘political’ or ‘partisan’ isn’t an automatic pathway to losing customers. While the Tesla, Bud Light, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and M&M controversies might loom large in brand strategists’ memories, being political can predictably boost sales—so long as you know your audience. For example, compare the customer reactions [boycotts], quarterly earnings, and revenue changes for Costco, Target, and Walmart after all three major retailers made headlines when they made it clear where they stand on DEI. 

Similar to how candidates have focused their efforts on turning out their base rather than persuading moderates, aligning your brand with a group that half of Americans fiercely identify with can be beneficial. The strategy isn’t a panacea. Starbucks isn’t likely to buttress their holiday sales with MAGA hat-themed coffee toppers. It only works if a large majority of your customers are already supporters of that group. 

In fact, when we asked Americans with differing levels of loyalty to political parties about how they think about brands and politics, strong partisans on both sides— comprising 52% of the American electorate—had some…gasp…strong thoughts. 

Releasing a “Liberal Line”?

While about half of Weak Democrats and Democratic Leaners reported that they would stop purchasing from a brand if it endorsed Trump during the 2024 election, 69% of Strong Democrats shared that they would boycott a brand should the CEO endorse Trump. 

So brands should avoid endorsing presidents at all costs? Not exactly. 

Regardless of whether a brand takes an outward political stance, consumers are still prone to perceive a brand to be political depending upon the demographic characteristics of its audience. Around four in ten Strong Democrats and one-third of Democratic Leaners disclosed that they infer others’ political identities based on their brand preferences. Nearly 30% of Democratic Leaners and 44% of Strong Democrats also publicly admitted they avoid using brands that conservatives use. 

Even more shocking, among Strong Democrats (30% of the electorate), roughly four in ten attested to perceiving someone to be ‘less of a Democrat’ for using a brand that conservatives like. 

Repping Republican Attire

A somewhat similar proportion of Republicans root their consumer preferences in partisan politics: 53% of Strong Republicans, 21% of Weak Republicans, and 33% of Republican Leaners claimed that they would be more likely to purchase from a brand if it endorsed Trump in 2024. On the other hand though, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to be turned off from a brand whose CEO endorses the top of the opposing ticket.

The story is the same for strong Republican partisans, who compose 22% of all registered voters. Similar to Democratic counterparts, Strong Republicans care more about brands’ perceived or real participation in partisan politics than Weak Republicans or Leaners. Strong Republicans are so motivated by politics that roughly four in ten avoid using products liberals use, become more interested in brands after they see other conservatives using their products, and are willing to pay a bit more for a product if the brand shares their political beliefs. 

Independents Pay Attention to Politics…just like we all Read those ‘Terms and Conditions’

But what about upsetting the 10% of True Independents in the electorate? What’s the risk of a backlash from less politically engaged weak* partisans? (* Emphasis for the sake of clarity, not a comment on anyone's bench max).

Here’s the thing: being partisan is generally advantageous when it comes to gaining loyalty from strong partisans and independent leaners because they exhibit more loyalty at the voting booth and show more interest in politics. While partisan branding might turn off some partisans from the opposing aisle, weak partisans and true Independents are usually already too checked out to care in the first place. 

Americans are known to be disengaged from (some might say avoid) news and current political events. Finding Americans who understand and appreciate political-memes such as JD Vance’s face or Bernie Sander’s mittens are really hard to find (like the end of the tape roll, pens that actually work, parking spots near the entrance, or the appropriately sized tupperware lid). Nearly one-quarter of True Independents are willing to admit that they rarely or never follow what’s going on in government and public affairs. 

Making Waves: How Brands Can Navigate Political Waters and Win Loyalty

Bringing politics into the consumer space isn’t a fast track to decreasing profits. It’s quite the contrary: it has the potential to be foundational to a brand’s growth strategy. As long as a brand knows its audience before they engage with social movements, there’s potential for purpose-driven profits.

Our research consistently shows that there are few truly Independent voters in the United States and partisans of both flavors prefer brands that share their political values.

That’s a wrap, folks

Curious about how Americans with differing partisan loyalties perceive your brand? Don't hesitate to Get in touch.  PS. We’ve already tested some! 

About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. We are decision science partners who equip our clients with evidence-based clarity to answer their most challenging strategy questions and achieve their growth goals. We uncover critical objective realities for our partners with bespoke, consultative research programs that push the boundaries of custom statistical methodologies. We’ve partnered with Fortune 100 brands like Nike, Bacardi, and Brooks, startups, consulting firms, and political campaigns. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

Reading the Political Tea Leaves

Unlike every 2024 election post-mortem you’ve read (or listened to—this was a podcast election after all), this one was not written by AI nor was it penned while staring off into space while the scrambled eggs burned. We took some time to consult our data and allow for a healthy internal debate to arrive at our perspective on the American electorate as Trump parades down Pennsylvania Avenue rolls over to the CapitalOne Arena. 

As a company that prides itself on capturing the desires, drivers, aspirations, and attitudes of diverse populations, it’s imperative that we skeptically evaluate what we know about the populations we claim to understand and how we understand them. In sharing our perspective on the 2024 election, we hope to add some substantive clarity to the discussion by drawing upon survey experiments that we fielded prior to the election. 

Full disclosure: we are not election pollsters and have no aspirations to be (but bless those of you who do!). We exist to equip our client partners (whether they are a company, philanthropy, or non-profit) with multiple angles of intelligence so they can makemake high-stakes strategy decisions to better reach and speak to their audiences. Support for a presidential candidate is one valid form of intelligence (aka horse-race polling), but we think it’s fundamental to understand the constellation of context, values, perceptions, and behaviors that collectively contribute to voters’ choices.   

From our perspective, what we saw in pre-election research was that voters did not feel comfortable revealing their true opinions on various highly sensitive topics that dominated the discourse of both campaigns. As a result, the campaign consulting industrial complex recommended strategies based on an incomplete picture of what truly mattered to voters. 

From data that we collected with Populace over the summer of 2024 using a novel methodology called Private Opinion Research, we found that voters were self-censoring their internal stance on many of the Republican and Democratic parties’ signature positions.

It’s telling that some of the distinguishing tenets of both campaigns were, even through public polling, not popular. On a host of issues, however, we found a difference between what supporters of both parties would disclose publicly compared to where they stood on the same issue when guaranteed privacy in a survey experiment. The causes of this self-censoring still warrant further debate but could be due to a variety of reasons such as discomfort for being out of step with “like-minded” peers or pressure to say the right thing—even if a voter disagrees in their most private of thoughts.   

Knowing that Republican and Democratic voters didn’t feel comfortable voicing their deeply held opinions on some of their party’s most distinguishing positions could be a leading indicator that the parties’ positions are out of step with its base and with voters it thought to be persuadable.

For example, private opinion research reveals that Democrats have lower levels of support for policies that attempt to assist and protect minority populations, such as affirmative action and gender diversity quotas. Although support is relatively higher for protecting transgender Americans, Democrats are self-censoring the extent to which they support the government protecting this minority population. Perhaps most telling is the extent to which Democrats are publicly much more inclined to declare that the government can be trusted (keep in mind these data were collected during the Biden administration) but privately have almost no trust in the government.  

Republicans are also subject to self-censorship on policy positions that were prominent flashpoints in the campaign. To draw a common parallel with Democrats’ self-censorship on support for affirmative action and diversity quotas, Republican voters were also self-censoring the extent to which they want DEI efforts to be dismantled. Seeing that prominent companies were quick to disband their DEI programs after the election suggests that they could be responding to this latent loathing of DEI programs. On immigration, Republicans are not nearly as unanimous in their hope to see the U.S.-Mexico border closed as public opinion polls would suggest, which may have turned off some potential voters given how prominent that messaging was during the campaign.  

These results signal to us that the public opinion polling methodologies that political campaigns rely on are not a sufficient tool to understand the latent complexities that voters have to muscle through as they decide if and for whom to vote. 

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have a burning strategic question on which your organization needs objective clarity? Get in touch and we can see how we can help.

About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. We are decision science partners who equip our clients with evidence-based clarity to answer their most challenging strategy questions and achieve their growth goals. We uncover critical objective realities for our partners with bespoke, consultative research programs that push the boundaries of custom statistical methodologies. We’ve partnered with Fortune 100 brands like Nike, Bacardi, and Brooks, startups, consulting firms, and political campaigns. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

Generosity on Hold: Exploring Donation Roadblocks

It’s the time of year to be charitable but for many of us, our holiday to-do list is longer than Santa’s naughty list. However, being busy isn’t the only reason we might put a hold on giving to charities on this “Giving Tuesday”—a global day of charity and generosity.

Many of us are facing donation whiplash from a year of political requests and a great need for humanitarian aid. In fact, Giving USA’s recent report found that although 67% of giving in the US is from individuals in 2023, there had been a 2.4% drop in personal donations from the previous year. Gradient surveyed a representative sample of the US population to understand the barriers to charitable giving for the average American this year.

Though a character like Buddy the Elf has a pure enthusiasm for giving, he doesn’t necessarily understand the roadblocks to a giving spirit that everyday people face. People may have the best intentions, but there are many reasons they might withhold donations. Gradient consulted with colleagues in donor relations at two high-profile charities to identify common blockers for potential donors and used a MaxDiff approach to explore the relative impact of 13 common impediments to making charitable contributions.

The most significant barrier for Americans is having a limited budget. Giving might be in the spirit of the holidays, but for many, charity is still on layaway. Charities also must provide clear information on how donations are being spent. Americans want to know what they give actually goes to the cause. Without this, donors may look elsewhere. Charities must moderate leadership pay and minimize administrative costs to earn donor's trust.

Donors might also be dissuaded from giving to a charity if there is negative publicity about a scandal or controversy. Avoiding this is important for any organization, but if it happens, its PR team should be proactive and remember transparency.

All of this speaks to how donors perceive organizations that are effective at serving their mission. If donors have reason to doubt a charity is successful, they will withhold their dollars.

Most donors are motivated by a sense of personal pride—not because they care about recognition or tax write-offs—but because they believe in the cause. Giving in and of itself is a reward, like when the Grinch’s heart grew three sizes in Whoville that day.

Much like the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, who gave spectral insight to Scrooge to help him prioritize generosity and goodwill, this approach helps organizations understand what truly matters to their audiences. Are you curious what is getting in the way of your audience? We’d love to talk. No ghostly visitations required!

From Tight Wallets to Open Hearts: Mapping the Giving Spectrum

Some wallets look like Ebenzer Scrooge’s and others like Bob Cratchit’s. Budget may be the biggest barrier for Americans overall, but not for everyone. Gradient used a Latent Class analysis to reveal the different types of donor segments that charities will be courting this Giving Tuesday. Like the eight nights of Hannukah, our analysis uncovered eight groups with different attitudes toward donating. 

First, segments are defined by the extent to which a limited budget is a concern or not. When it comes to giving, some are Kris Kringles, and others are Kevin McCallisters—just trying to protect their homes and keep the lights on.

Of those where limited budget is the top concern (48%), we uncovered four unique segments:

• Humble Helpers (9%): Budget is the dominant barrier. They donate small, one-off amounts, when they’re able, to charities that share their values.

• Priority Pretenders (21%): Prioritizing other causes is their major concern after budget, but that might be self-delusion. Many never donate, but those that do have low value, frequency, and intent.

• Salary Scrutinizers (10%): Their main concern after budget limitation is leadership pay. They tend to make small-dollar donations spontaneously, taking pride in helping an organization reach its goals, and are motivated by a sense of duty.

• Alignment Allies (8%): They reject donating to causes that don’t align with their values. They have the highest intent and highest value among the budget-conscious groups, with similar motivations to Salary Scrutinizers.

How to Speak to Budget-Conscious Donors: You don’t need a four-foot-tall leg lamp to see that for some, giving is a heart’s reward, even when it’s a stretch. When spreading goodwill like George Bailey, money becomes just a detail. Speak simply to your organization’s mission and values, emphasizing how even small contributions go to the cause and add up to a big difference.

Among donors where budget is not a concern (29%), we find three additional segments:

• Confidential Contributors (11%): Their primary worry is about protecting their personal information. They are high-intent, low-frequency, moderate-value donors. Personal fulfillment motivates most, but a quarter are seeking tax breaks.

• Accountability Altruists (11%): They have several blockers, all centering around a charity’s accountability and fiscal responsibility. They are higher-value donors who give out of a sense of duty and belief in the mission.

• Reputation Reliants (7%): Their main barriers are bad press and ineffectiveness. They are higher-value donors with the highest intent and frequency of giving, donating to causes in which they have a strong belief.

How to Speak To Higher-Value Donors: Santa doesn’t worry about budgeting his giving—he just checks the list twice and makes sure everyone’s got something to smile about. Speak to all aspects of financial responsibility, mission effectiveness, and privacy protection while avoiding controversy. Emphasize personal fulfillment and a sense of duty.

The last group is only moderately concerned about budget, caring more about other issues:

• Balanced Benefactors (23%): They are dissuaded by irrelevant causes, lack of spending info or clear communication, perceived ineffectiveness, over-solicitation, and not having their giving recognized. They donate with average size, frequency, and intent, with about half making recurring donations.

How to Speak to Balanced Benefactors: These folks are a bit like Clark Griswold, trying to make the holidays perfect down to the last detail—just make sure not to deny them their bonus. For these middle-value donors, provide clear communication about the mission and how financial management leads to big-picture impact. Give recognition for contributions, but don’t solicit them too often.

By understanding these unique donor profiles, charitable organizations can overcome the barriers that keep people from donating, working to maximize giving to help fund their missions.

Methodology

How Gradient Explored Barriers to Giving

If you want to see into Santa’s workshop, let Gradient show you how the elves make the toys. We have nothing to hide in how we uncovered these insights about barriers to charitable giving.

First, we used a best-worst choice exercise called Maximum Difference Scaling (MaxDiff) to determine the relative strength of 13 barriers in preventing donations. Among our nationally representative sample of Americans, we presented each respondent a series of tasks, presenting four barriers each time. Since there are so many possible combinations of 13 barriers, no one respondent could see everything, so we balanced many possible combinations across the sample.

Using advanced analytical methods, we build a model of how each individual prioritizes the barriers, and from that, we can understand the whole population, showing the ranking of barriers from biggest to smallest.

Next, to look at what unique groups exist within the overall sample, Gradient used a Latent Class analysis which identifies subgroups with similar patterns of barriers. We evaluated several candidate outcomes of the analysis, arriving at the one we present here because it balanced mathematical performance and coherence in telling an insightful story. We bring these segments to life by profiling how each group is different in their attitudes and behavior.

Reach out today to see how Gradient can help your organization apply these techniques to understand the uniqueness and nuance within your audience.

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have a burning strategic question on which your organization needs objective clarity? Get in touch and we can see how we can help.

About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. We are decision science partners who equip our clients with evidence-based clarity to answer their most challenging strategy questions and achieve their growth goals. We uncover critical objective realities for our partners with bespoke, consultative research programs that push the boundaries of custom statistical methodologies. We’ve partnered with Fortune 100 brands like Nike, Bacardi, and Brooks, startups, consulting firms, and political campaigns. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. We are decision science partners who equip our clients with evidence-based clarity to answer their most challenging strategy questions and achieve their growth goals. We uncover critical objective realities for our partners with bespoke, consultative research programs that push the boundaries of custom statistical methodologies. We’ve partnered with Fortune 100 brands like Nike, Bacardi, and Brooks, startups, consulting firms, and political campaigns. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

Oh I Wanna Take You to Bermuda, Tommy Bahama

🎵It’s summertime and the living is… hot, hot, hot!🎵 As Americans gird themselves for (possibly) another “hottest summer on record,” they can take (small) comfort in the fact that fashion has adapted from three piece suits and petticoats to board shorts and tank tops. Perhaps clothing trends would have evolved more quickly if Queen Victoria had encountered climate change. 

With warmer weather in mind we applied Gradient’s bespoke brand equity analysis tool to summer apparel brands—the clothes you’d wear to a beach, on a kayaking trip, or in high school if you were a teenager in the mid-aughts. Our brand equity analysis goes beyond a standard funnel and pinpoints a brand’s key attributes that drive consumer purchase preferences.

Click on image to enlarge

So what drives consumer preference for summer apparel brands? This might come as a shock, but for most Americans, summer swag that is affordable is what gets customers in the (changing room) door and to say yes to the (tennis) dress. What might be a little more surprising is the import consumers place on brands sharing their own values. Consumers are more than 60% more likely to both consider and purchase from summer apparel brands they believe share their values. 

Gradient’s brand equity analysis is useful for looking at the differential effect that certain brand attributes or characteristics have at different stages of the customer journey. For example, the comfort of and sustainable materials used in their clothing drive purchase, but those factors aren’t as important (might even be detrimental) when consumers consider where to shop for their island getaway.

If a consumer’s values include not seeing Earth become one giant landfill, they may want a clothing brand that shares that value and uses sustainable materials. Let’s look at how the specific brands perform on these attributes.

Click on image to enlarge

Patagonia both embodies American consumers’ values and is most associated with sustainable materials—and it blows its competitor brands off the . It’s only logical that Americans rank Patagonia first for both attributes considering all their talk of environmental activism. It’s even more believable considering their founder donated the $3 billion company to a charitable trust. On the other hand, consumers aren’t fooled by brands associated more with fashion than sustainability. Pour one out for the (much-loved) 20-year-old Roxy t-shirts that are weeping in a landfill. 

What can these summer apparel brands—or any brand—do with these insights? If alignment of values matters so much, understanding your customers’ values might be a good start. Fortunately, consumer research helps brands understand their audience, like leveraging mindset-based customer segmentation to uncover the values and mindsets that motivate and guide their customers. Brands should know they have a critical opportunity to get consumers to consider and purchase their products if they speak to their customers' values.

Want to see more data about how specific apparel brands performed in our analysis? Curious about the methodology? Just reply to this email.

GRADIENT IN THE WILD

When Gradient Met Reforge

Earlier this week Gradient’s Head of Research, Kyle Block, had the privilege of co-presenting a product roadmap-focused webinar with the cool folks at digital education experts Reforge. Thanks to those of you who attended! 

If you didn’t attend, are you curious about how to identify in-demand features of your product or understand the trade-offs your consumers make? Have you always wondered what Kyle’s voice sounds like? Either way, you can watch the webinar below or read through his presentation here.

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have a burning strategic question on which your organization needs objective clarity? Get in touch and we can see how we can help.

About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. We are decision science partners who equip our clients with evidence-based clarity to answer their most challenging strategy questions and achieve their growth goals. We uncover critical objective realities for our partners with bespoke, consultative research programs that push the boundaries of custom statistical methodologies. We’ve partnered with Fortune 100 brands like Nike, Bacardi, and Brooks, startups, consulting firms, and political campaigns. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

Gradient on the Air Waves

What’s your podcast topic of choice? True crime? Historical deep dives? Beloved TV show rewatches? True crime (it’s ok, you can admit it)? How about… data science? These days, there’s a podcast for everyone and we’re honored that our Head of Research, Kyle Block, recently guested on Dr. Genevieve Hayes’s podcast, “Value Driven Data Science.” 

Genevieve and Kyle’s discussion revolves around the necessary blend of art and science behind survey design (one of Gradient’s passions, as you probably know), including how to design more effective quantitative surveys to ensure they deliver value and the future of survey data analysis. Any brand or organization who wants to dip their toe in the water of quantitative market research can find some crucial tips here from Kyle and Genevieve. Have a listen and let us know what you think!

If you enjoy the podcast, please share it with your LinkedIn network!

Mark Your Calendars, Get Set, Event!

If you listened to either of Kyle’s latest podcast guest spots and you’re clamoring for more of his quantitative research insights—or simply more of his soothing, dulcet tones—we’re thrilled to announce an upcoming event with the awesome team at Reforge.

Please join us on Tuesday, July 9 at 11:00am EDT as Kyle presents "How to Figure Out What Your Customers Want You to Build." Reserve your spot now and register here for free. 

Kyle’s event topic comes from years of hands-on experience crafting product development roadmaps for Gradient's clients. His goal is for attendees to walk away with the foundations of how to identify in-demand product features, understand consumer trade-offs, and validate feature ideas for a product development roadmap.

We hope to see you on Tuesday, July 9!

Do you have a product design question? Reply to this email and Kyle can address it during the event!

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have a burning strategic question on which your organization needs objective clarity? Get in touch and we can see how we can help.

About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. We are decision science partners who equip our clients with evidence-based clarity to answer their most challenging strategy questions and achieve their growth goals. We uncover critical objective realities for our partners with bespoke, consultative research programs that push the boundaries of custom statistical methodologies. We’ve partnered with Fortune 100 brands like Nike, Bacardi, and Brooks, startups, consulting firms, and political campaigns. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have a burning strategic question on which your organization needs objective clarity? Get in touch and we can see how we can help.

About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. We are decision science partners who equip our clients with evidence-based clarity to answer their most challenging strategy questions and achieve their growth goals. We uncover critical objective realities for our partners with bespoke, consultative research programs that push the boundaries of custom statistical methodologies. We’ve partnered with Fortune 100 brands like Nike, Bacardi, and Brooks, startups, consulting firms, and political campaigns. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

The Sentences That Can Reduce Sentences

Say what you will about the United States, there’s no denying we’re world leaders in places named after George Washington, Super Bowl championships, and incarceration rates. If, like us, you’re not happy about that third feat, it may be encouraging to know there are people working passionately to initiate transformative change in America’s criminal justice system. One organization leading the charge for criminal justice reform and public safety innovation is The Just Trust. 

Over the past year and a half, Gradient has partnered with The Just Trust to develop an evidence-based, reusable playbook that criminal justice advocacy organizations can use to mobilize Americans from all walks of life to do something about the urgent problems facing the criminal justice system today. This project is funded by The Just Trust’s donors, perhaps even someone like you!

As part of our partnership, Gradient worked with several grantees of The Just Trust, including organizations active across the political spectrum, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU faced a familiar problem to criminal justice reform advocates: How can they craft convincing, pro-reform messages that are true to the ACLU’s values and voice?

This challenge requires a creative and flexible approach, so we applied a conjoint analysis to the ACLU’s message-testing question. The advantage to this approach is, rather than being limited by testing one complete message at a time, our unique methodology allows us to test several messaging components simultaneously to maximize impact. This is definitely our most consequential use of a conjoint since we used it to reveal whether people would rather vacation on the moon or on Mars. What can we say? It’s a flexible method.

Click image to enlarge

We found that the most important messaging elements for the ACLU to get right with the American public are Policy & Benefit, Messenger, and Villain. These components have the most impact on the persuasiveness of the ACLU’s message with Americans. On the flip side, the Value component of ACLU’s messaging did not play nearly as big of a role in persuasion. Turns out Americans most want to hear what organizations will do about the criminal justice problem, especially if the message is delivered by their preferred messenger.

The ACLU research is just the start of what Gradient and The Just Trust have planned for research with criminal justice reform advocates. Given the demand for this type of conjoint-based messaging component analysis, Gradient and The Just Trust are building an interactive message-testing lab for advocates to initiate rapid message-testing projects and quickly improve the topic’s persuasiveness and ability to affect change at a large scale. We’re proud to partner with The Just Trust and more of their grantees as they pursue criminal justice reform across the country.

Does your organization want to test elements of your marketing campaign? Let us know and we can help.

Gradient in the Wild

Gradient Featured on “What Gets Measured” Podcast

You know we love to talk about data—and how organizations can use data to make challenging strategic decisions a little less challenging. That’s why we were thrilled when Kyle, Gradient’s Head of Research, was interviewed to talk about exactly that on NinjaCat’s “What Gets Measured” podcast!

Kyle’s episode with NinjaCat Content Strategist Jake Sanders focused on marketing data interpretation and how every business can use quantitative research to make sense of their audience and their market. "We developed a statistical model for every country,” Kyle explains of Gradient’s research approach, “and found that what matters in this market is not [necessarily] what matters in that market." This insight reveals the necessity of custom research for every organization, something we do for global brands every day. 

Want the details of Kyle’s full episode? Listen here!

Gradient x Oatly

Gradient partnered with Oatly to conduct a modeled mindset segmentation of Gen Z (yes, the Gen Z). The results helped guide where and how Oatly grows its market share among those hard-to-parse Gen Zers. 

We were lucky enough to have Heidi Hackemer, Former Executive Director at Oatly Futures Lab, speak about her experience working with Gradient. Check out the video below!

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have an idea for a research story? Want to see it in (digital) print? You can submit your own ideas for upcoming stories to our Trendlines idea repository. 

Can't wait for more? Take a look at our public roadmap to see what's in store and vote on potential future Trendlines stories.

About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. To address this, Gradient partners with startups, Fortune 100 brands, consulting firms, and political campaigns who aren’t confident answering strategic and directional questions. Through our partnership we help these organizations achieve objective clarity by providing custom and actionable insights based on statistical rigor. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

Third Eye Unblinded

Want to know a secret? We love fortune tellers. We’re (sort of) in the same field—predicting the future. Plus, they make our predictions look better because ours are based on actual data. We love fortune tellers so much we didn’t even mind when one predicted we’d die while making a pun.

In appreciation of those who provide clarity, we asked Americans to shuffle their tarot deck, polish their crystal balls, and try their luck at predicting future events. If their premonitions are to be believed, the (nearish) future looks bright.

On average, Americans think the minimum wage will be raised to $20/hour in 22 years and that a woman will become US President within a quarter of a century. Other positive events we look forward to are a little further away: Apparently it’ll take another 42 years for an LGBTQ+ candidate to become US President and over half a century before world hunger is completely eliminated.

Click on the plot (that’s the technical name for the chart) to enlarge

 Those hoping that science fiction will soon be science fact will also be disappointed. According to Americans, it will be almost 50 years before we have human cloning (42 years), widely available brain implants (44 years), or AI replaces us at our jobs (44 years). Our plans to get out of work by cloning ourselves and then replacing our clones with AI are seeming less likely.

Despite saying they don’t want another pandemic for 63 years, on average, Americans are predicting another one in only 35. Hopefully it’s just nostalgia for working in their pajamas and Apollo hasn’t bestowed Americans with the curse gift of prophecy.

Do you have an awesome Trendlines story idea we should know about? We want you to tell us about it!

Gradient Methodology Showcase

The Baits-You-Into-Revealing-Your-True-Preferences Motel

Imagine you're a brand manager at a hotel chain. Not a regular hotel chain, a cool hotel chain. Say you're looking to expand or revamp the chain’s amenities to entice more clientele: What features do you choose? Using a conjoint experiment, we did the work for you and got American consumers to reveal their true preferences for a hotel.

A conjoint is a forced tradeoff experiment where respondents choose between two options across a series of products with varying features. This survey task reveals preferences consumers might not consider if directly asked, “What’s your most preferred feature about a hotel?”

Another great thing about a conjoint is it targets consumer preferences twofold: attributes, or general features, and levels, options within a feature. For this imaginary hotel, the attributes include entertainment, food, and amenities. For the levels, we chose “cool” hotel features—but any brand can customize a conjoint with their product features and determine what we call the “hidden” drivers of consumer behavior.

Click on the plot to enlarge

For Americans, the most important attribute when choosing a hotel is entertainment, accounting for nearly a third (29%) of their preference among hypothetical hotels. Of the entertainment options, the most appealing is split between live music in the lobby and an outdoor cinema movie night (both 30%).

So… live lobby music, huh? We bet Americans aren’t seeking a hotel with a Liberace look-alike tickling the ivories, but think about what live lobby music telegraphs: leisure, luxury, relaxation. Something that sings, “This ain’t no Best Western.”

In the realm of Best Western offerings, buffet restaurants are more preferred than fine dining restaurants. If you’re a hotel chain brand manager and looking for our guidance, all-you-can-eat will yield both bloated guests—and bigger revenue projections. 

Curious about the hidden product preferences your consumers are after? Let us know and we can help you identify them.

Flush the Sin Sticks Down to Hell

Smoking cigarettes has become increasingly unpopular over the past few decades. For some younger Americans, the D.A.R.E. program curbed the habit; for others, the famous Simpsons quote lives rent-free in their heads: “Smokers are jokers.” As joke enthusiasts, we wanted to see how many jokers are out there.

One in four Americans identify as a smoker, and an additional 10% admit to having smoked cigarettes in the past. Among those who currently smoke, 86% identify as smokers—the other 14% want you to get off their back!

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A Trendlines subscriber named “Marty Marlboro” asks what the going rate would be for a non-smoker to smoke one cigarette a day for the rest of their lives. Or, as Marty puts it, “How much do we need to pay someone to be as Kool as a Camel?” Thankfully, the chances of converting someone into a daily smoker are Virginia Slim(s), as the average American would want one million dollars to add a nail to their coffin each day.

About Gradient

We are decision science partners who equip our clients with evidence-based clarity to answer their most challenging strategy questions and achieve their growth goals. We uncover critical objective realities for our partners with bespoke, consultative research programs that push the boundaries of custom statistical methodologies. We’ve partnered with Fortune 100 brands like Nike, Bacardi, and Brooks, startups, consulting firms, and political campaigns. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have an idea for a research story? Want to see it in (digital) print? You can submit your own ideas for upcoming stories to our Trendlines idea repository. 

Can't wait for more? Take a look at our public roadmap to see what's in store and vote on potential future Trendlines stories.

We’re Not Talking About Games, We’re Talking About Brands, Man

America's annual month of lunacy, March Madness, is coming to a close. Although NC State is the only Cinderella story left in the tournament, we firmly believe all remaining players deserve a glass slipper. 

As researchers we're inspired by the exciting play and high level of competition nifty head-to-head structure of the tournament, so we wondered: How do Americans rank some of the most prominent U.S. corporations? Instead of having the organizations engage in a series of spreadsheet balancing competitions, we turned to our trusted MaxDiff experiment, a forced tradeoff exercise that reveals hidden preferences.

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Amazon is the clear favorite: Americans choose the company as their most-liked brand 357% more often than the average brand. It’s hard not to like the brand that delivers glass slippers faster than a fairy godmother. Quick aside: Can we all agree that Cinderella’s glass heels shouldn’t be classified as “slippers”?! 

YouTube, Walmart, Google, and Netflix round out America’s top five most-liked brands. Americans truly love free or suspiciously inexpensive products! They also love… Netflix. 

Disney’s likeability stock plummeted since the last time we conducted this analysis in 2020, falling from the 5th spot to 20th. Not to be conspiracy theorists, but they bought 20th Century Fox not long before our first analysis…

OpenAI (ChatGPT) and X (formerly Twitter) are the two least popular brands. Either Americans don’t like brands with multiple names, or data privacy concerns are directly related to likeability. It all makes sense now—we weren’t cool in high school because people thought we would leak their data, not because we love brackets!

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More Privacy Than a Cubicle

If sneaking 12 items into the "10 items or less" checkout lane is any indicator, Americans aren’t always honest about their beliefs and behaviors. This is especially true when people feel social pressure to express a certain opinion. To circumvent this issue, Gradient developed a survey method to determine precisely how many items Americans have in their sensitive-opinion-shopping-cart. (We honestly believe this analogy is totally working.)

Traditionally dubbed a “list experiment,” our Private Opinion Analysis peels back the curtain Americans intentionally hang in the window of their psyche to obscure their true opinions from survey researchers. It’s not as creepy as we make it sound: Private Opinion Analysis works by guaranteeing privacy, as respondents are never asked directly to share their opinions about individual statements. Instead, they are asked to read a list of statements and choose the number with which they agree.

Because there are some opinions you might not want to share with HR, we employed Private Opinion Analysis to better understand how people truly feel about career fulfillment and remote work. 

Only about a quarter of Americans (27%) publicly think it’s a shame more people work remotely than before the pandemic, but an even lower proportion (11%) express this opinion privately. In other words, when we ensure privacy, 16% fewer Americans agree with the idea that more remote work is a bad thing.

Privately, Americans are less optimistic about the potential for work to be fulfilling (19% say it’s not possible) than they are willing to admit publicly (8%). There’s an even bigger public/private gap among those with a four-year degree or higher—6% publicly say work cannot be fulfilling, while 24% privately agree with this sentiment. Ironically, the task of figuring out why folks feel this way can probably constitute its own fulfilling career.

Want to see the data? Curious about the methodology? Just reply to this email.

Putting the “I” in Childcare

With the pandemic state of emergency officially declared over, Zoom meetings are slowly being replaced with IRL Zoom meetings—there’s got to be a shorter way to say that—as workers are trickling back into their open concept offices. Unfortunately, with a return to the office comes a return of many of the old problems of working outside the home: commuting, having to wear pants, and, of course, childcare. 

Given that commutes are boring and we're afraid of what we'd learn if we asked about the pants, we decided just to check in with Americans about their current childcare strategies.

Given the cost of childcare, it’s not surprising that nearly a quarter of parents (21%) rely on one partner staying at home, either long or short-term, to care for their children. However, this is a sharp decline from the 38% of parents who said they were the primary childcare provider for their children during the pandemic last time we asked this question.

Click on image to enlarge

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have an idea for a research story? Want to see it in (digital) print? You can submit your own ideas for upcoming stories to our Trendlines idea repository. 

Can't wait for more? Take a look at our public roadmap to see what's in store and vote on potential future Trendlines stories.

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About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. To address this, Gradient partners with startups, Fortune 100 brands, consulting firms, and political campaigns who aren’t confident answering strategic and directional questions. Through our partnership we help these organizations achieve objective clarity by providing custom and actionable insights based on statistical rigor. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

Are Men Merely Steak-Eating, Whiskey-Drinking Woodworkers?

The role of gender in society raises many important questions: Why are ladies always being asked to throw their hands in the air like they just don’t care? Why are single-person bathrooms gendered? We should be focusing on the proliferation of faulty bathroom locks, since no one feels safe with a janky lock, regardless of the sign on the door.

Debates about whether gender is fluid, binary, or nonexistent are generally abstract in nature as gender is a social construct that changes both from culture to culture and within the same society over time. To help provide a foundation for these necessary conversations, which are always necessarily nuanced, we investigated how Americans gender particular objects, professions, and activities.

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According to many Americans, masculinity is most strongly associated with woodworking, trucks, and weight lifting. In contrast, femininity is largely connected to ballet, the color pink, and candles. Yes, you read that right—a soothing object that emits light and pleasant scents has no place in a man cave, according to most Americans. But what if the candle smells like a steak?

The good news is not everyone sees life in terms of blues and pinks. Arguing, art, and love are thankfully seen as gender-neutral by most Americans. Which can only mean that nothing is less gendered than arguing with someone about who loves art more.

The distribution for boy bands is the most *⚠️Warning: Unnecessary statistical term ahead* platykurtic, meaning it has the least consensus on the extent and form it is gendered, and will be more prone to spark argumentation. Honestly, how could someone not love boy bands? They have the emotional turmoil of punk rockers and the voice of Christina Aguilera. Speaking of platykurtic, Americans' gender identity also spans the entire distribution. We are all boy bands at heart!

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No Pinching Pennies for Politicians

Everyone loves politicians because they are so down to earth and do their best to make our lives better. Oops. Did we say politicians? We meant plants; plants are grounded and provide the oxygen we need to survive. Politicians are kinda the antithesis of plants (nice try, former Representative Mayra Flores): flying around on jets, never touching the ground, and making us choke on their carbon emissions in the process.

While their jet-setting lifestyles make it clear politicians are out of touch with how much the average citizen earns, we tested whether Americans could guess the salary of the president and members of Congress. The average American believes the president earns around $661k, 20% more than their actual $400k salary. Similarly, Americans overestimated Congress members' $174k annual salary by nearly $200k. Maybe members of Congress mistakenly think Americans make twice as much as they actually do, and that's why they haven't raised the minimum wage in 15 years.

Younger Americans are more likely to overestimate the earning potential of a politician. In fact, the average guess of the president’s salary among 18-30 year-olds ($1,153,968) is 3x higher than the guess of Americans 65 or older ($368,043).

Compared to their elder counterparts, younger Americans both estimate politicians are paid more and believe they should be paid more. Whereas the average 18-30 year-old thinks the president should earn $1,184,989 a year, those older than 65 believe the figure should be around $429,770. At least they have bribes unlimited campaign contributions to fall back on.

Want to see the data? Curious about the methodology? Just reply to this email.

Battle of the Band(Name)s

As the late, great Ludwig van Beethoven once said, “A band is only as good as its name.”* It only took 90 years after Beethoven’s death for the first band to be formally formed: The Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB). Not to be confused with one of the founding members of the Wu-Tang Clan, ODB. However, both are for the children.

Mercifully, band names have gotten a lot better since ODJB’s arrival on the scene, or at least shorter. To find out the best band name of all time, we conducted a MaxDiff experiment using some popular bands from the past 100 years. Before we dive into the data, we would like to formally apologize to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. You clearly have the best band name, but you need a few more years of crushing the psychedelic garage rock scene before you make the all-time list.

Americans voted The Rolling Stones as the best band name, followed by the Beatles, and Earth, Wind, and Fire. Clearly, this has nothing to do with music preferences and is solely based on the super clever names of the band. 🙄 

*Ludwig van Beethoven most likely never made such a statement. But who knows? The man was a visionary.

Click on the image to enlarge.

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have an idea for a research story? Want to see it in (digital) print? You can submit your own ideas for upcoming stories to our Trendlines idea repository. 

Can't wait for more? Take a look at our public roadmap to see what's in store and vote on potential future Trendlines stories.

Do you know someone who’ll love this?

About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. To address this, Gradient partners with startups, Fortune 100 brands, consulting firms, and political campaigns who aren’t confident answering strategic and directional questions. Through our partnership we help these organizations achieve objective clarity by providing custom and actionable insights based on statistical rigor. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

Banking on Trust

Trust is the foundation of love and safety. It’s shaped by our early childhood experiences and impacts our satisfaction with life, as trust is tightly correlated with happiness.

The importance of trust is best summarized by the great poet Drake (aka Drizzy; aka Champagne Papi; aka Heartbreak Drake): Oh, whoa, trust issues.

Whoa indeed, Drake. While it’s important to know who we can trust with our hearts, in today’s world, it’s arguably more important to know who we can trust with our data. To find out which organizations Americans trust to keep their data safe and secure and which are making us feel a collective “whoa,” we turned to our trusty MaxDiff experiment.

Americans appear to trust organizations with the most financial liability for misusing their data: Medical providers and banks.

Social media platforms are collectively the least trusted organizations. Due to rumors (and some evidence) that user data is accessible by the Chinese government, Americans trust TikTok the least to keep their data safe. If the Chinese government knows exactly how many strangely satisfying power-washing videos we watch a day, what is stopping them from taking over the world!?

Americans have yet to warm up to artificial intelligence, as OpenAI is the second-least trusted organization. While OpenAI hasn’t had any major data breaches yet, the sheer thought of the world knowing that ChatGPT is our new best friend is clearly scary enough to warrant skepticism.

Do you have an awesome Trendlines story idea we should know about? We want you to tell us about it!

Feel the Burn(out)

Medical procedural dramas from ER to Grey’s Anatomy will lead you to believe that when you get sick or hurt in America, you go to the hospital for care (if you can afford it). Now, no one is saying you shouldn’t go to the hospital if you contract the bubonic plague or get impaled by a tree, but we can’t help noticing that our media prioritizes out-of-home caregiving for the sick and, especially, the elderly. 

In contrast with cultures and countries where a family unit might live together and collectively care for each other, only 14% of Americans currently care for a family member (who is not their child) in a full-time or support role. For reference, that’s low enough to match the percentage of adults who said they were “very happy” during the height of the pandemic. 

Among Americans caring for someone, the most common caregiver role is caring for a parent or step-parent (32%), followed by a spouse (22%). This data probably won’t surprise tired members of the current sandwich generation, those lucky folks raising kids while also raising hell about why dad is still driving at his age.

It looks like some caregivers are practicing much-needed self-care (or plain ol’ good boundaries), since very few indicate that their caregiving frequently interferes with their leisure, work, or relationships. In contrast, 40% say they sometimes feel exhausted or burned out, and a whopping 87% of caregivers mention they’d like some form of government support for their caregiving activities. Hey, it’s an election year, anything can happen, right? Looking at you Biden, unless you want Hunter to be in charge of your medical decisions.

Want to see the data? Curious about the methodology? Just reply to this email.

Skyrocketing Corporate Culture

We’ve all heard the old saying: “Men are from Mars, and women are from Venus.” What you never hear is what the labor conditions are like on each planet, and with Elon Musk promising that we’ll all be living on Mars, it seems like a good time to find out. That’s why, to determine which planet we’d prefer to live (and work) on, we asked Americans whether they believe men or women are better at implementing various aspects of corporate leadership.

The good news is the majority of Americans think both men and women are equally as good at implementing all aspects of corporate leadership. However, there are some leadership areas where men or women rated significantly higher than the opposite sex. Americans rated women as better than men in nine out of thirteen leadership practices. Men were rated better in a few fields, specifically firing people (30% vs 9% of women), negotiating profitable business deals (21% vs 10% of women), and maximizing profit margins (19% vs 9% of women). We promise the sample had men in it!

In a vacuum, Venus over Mars seems like an easy choice until you have the context that, while the corporate culture is better, the clouds on Venus are made of sulfuric acid.

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have an idea for a research story? Want to see it in (digital) print? You can submit your own ideas for upcoming stories to our Trendlines idea repository. 

Can't wait for more? Take a look at our public roadmap to see what's in store and vote on potential future Trendlines stories.

Do you know someone who’ll love this?

About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. To address this, Gradient partners with startups, Fortune 100 brands, consulting firms, and political campaigns who aren’t confident answering strategic and directional questions. Through our partnership we help these organizations achieve objective clarity by providing custom and actionable insights based on statistical rigor. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

March Madness: Brands Edition

America is a nation of (currently homebound) shoppers. With the NCAA on hiatus, it looks like online shopping is our new March Madness. Let’s see how the top brands match up against each other.

The tournament uses a MaxDiff experiment (we love these btw) where survey respondents select the brands they like the most and the least among the 75 largest brands. 

Amazon is the number one seed and expected favorite to win the Big Dance, likely sharing the Final Four stage with two other tech firms — Netflix and Google — and a retail powerhouse, Walmart. YouTube and Paypal are also expected to rep the Big Tech conference all the way to the Elite Eight. 

The Big 4 Accounting conference does not make it far in many Americans’ brackets with Deloitte and PwC (and don’t forget about Accenture) rounding out the least admired common brands.  

Yes, Millennials have killed off scores of consumer categories (although bar soap may make a comeback this year) — but streaming media is not one of them. In fact, Americans aged 18-30 admire Netflix and YouTube even more than Amazon. 

There won’t be a Cinderella story for big tobacco this March; Marlboro is the least admired brand among every segment of Americans. 

Do you have an awesome Trendlines story idea we should know about? We want you to tell us about it!

Gun Control Is Out of Control

You know your society is (not even Nordstrom returnable) broken when lethal violence is as common as going to your mom’s house for dinner every Sunday. Despite the illusion that everyone in America has a gun in their purse/glovebox/locker/mattress, only a minority of Americans (27%) actually own a gun for personal use.

Yet even gun owners don’t stand united on the effectiveness of current gun control regulations. Nearly half of gun owners think current regulations are lenient, while 35% think they are about right and 17% too restrictive. And to erase any mental image that may persist of gun owners casually toting automatic weapons on their Sunday stroll to dinner @ mom’s, three-fifths of gun owners want to see military-style assault weapons banned.

Perhaps American gun culture isn’t as entrenched as it appears: More Americans would like to completely ban the sale, transfer, and ownership of guns than actually own them. Expanded background checks and forcing youngsters to wait until they can legally get plastered in public before being allowed to purchase a gun are the only proposals in 2022 that don’t cause a national controversy. And the average year Americans think the Supreme Court ruled that the 2nd Amendment protects the individual right to bear arms is 1916. The actual year that happened? 2008. 

But since 44% of the population literally think the right to own a gun is bestowed by God, don’t expect them to disappear anytime soon. At least until the rapture. 

Want to see the data? Curious about the methodology? Just reply to this email.

American Idol: GOAT Edition

Who is the greatest singer of all time? Since we unfortunately have not (yet) developed the technology to reanimate the corpses of late, legendary musical performers in order to prop them up on stage for a tournament-style vocal competition on which we all get to vote, we settled for the next-best thing: a MaxDiff experiment.

Long after her death, Americans Will Always Love Whitney Houston’s voice: Houston was 197% more likely to be chosen as the most talented vocalist than the average artist on the list. Michael Jackson’s vocal talent didn’t hold up so Bad, either, placing him as the second-best singer. But, at least when compared to these vocal juggernauts, Americans apparently wish Ed Sheeran would do a little more Thinking Out Loud and a little less singing out loud.

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have an idea for a research story? Want to see it in (digital) print? You can submit your own ideas for upcoming stories to our Trendlines idea repository.

Can't wait for more? Take a look at our public roadmap to see what's in store and vote on potential future Trendlines stories.

Do you know someone who’ll love this?

About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. To address this, Gradient partners with startups, Fortune 100 brands, consulting firms, and political campaigns who aren’t confident answering strategic and directional questions. Through our partnership we help these organizations achieve objective clarity by providing custom and actionable insights based on statistical rigor. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

You Are What You Feed

People often describe their personalities (and sometimes that of their ex-partner) in terms of animals: “Curious like a cat,” or “Loyal like a dog.” This got us wondering how personalities are correlated with pet preference.

Most Americans (53%) consider themselves a dog person—unsurprising, considering dogs are the most popular household pet. The rest of America is split into cat people (22%) and those who hold no firm preference for either animal (24%). It’s always possible the latter are lying and we could design a private opinion research survey to determine if they really do have a preference.

Married Americans are significantly more likely to identify as dog people (and signal their preference through Christmas card photos and car decals), while the unmarried among us are more likely to cuddle up with a feline companion. Can we ask Beyoncé to change some lyrics? Let’s hear it for, “I’m a single lady (with a cat)!”

After declaring their feline, canine, or untethered allegiance, we asked a representative sample of Americans to complete the Big Five personality test.

Both dog and cat people over-index on openness to experiences compared to those with no furry allegiance. You have to be really open-minded to routinely bag dog poop and sift out used kitty litter.

Dog people are more often the outgoing, social, tail-wagging extroverts you’d expect, while cat people tend to be more neurotic and prone to skittishness (back arched and hair raised). They’re called scaredy cats for a reason.

Regardless of furry friend preference, Americans generally have agreeable and conscientious personalities: 60% reveal they are kind and trusting, while 64% reveal they are self-disciplined & motivated. Maybe America isn’t the dog-eat-dog world it’s sometimes made out to be.

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Got Plant-Based Milk?

In late 2021 we reported a bowel-shattering statistic: One in five Americans describe themselves as lactose intolerant. That’s right, 20% associate dairy with dairy-rhea. For all those looking to cash in on America’s intolerance (looking at you, insert politician name here) and start a plant-based milk company, we’ve got you covered.

In the golden age of milk, where nipples aren’t a prerequisite, there are many considerations for the burgeoning milk manager. First, figuring out which type of plant-based milk is best to produce. Almost all Americans have tried (74%) or would consider trying (22%) almond milk, so the nutty beverage appears to be the safest bet. However, for those looking to tap into expanding markets like they’re a creamy keg, macadamia milk is the way to go: Only 15% of Americans who've tried plant-based milk have tasted the macadamia variety, yet a whopping 66% are willing to try the real Hawaiian punch.

Next, you'll need to identify any competitors in order to plant fear in the roots of their infrastructure. During the past three months, Americans in the plant-based milk market were most likely to purchase products from Almond Breeze (43%) or Silk (41%). Milk our words, Almond Breeze’s reign at the top will soon expire.

Lastly, you’ll need to know which brand equities to focus on so your full market takeover doesn’t go sour. To udder-stand which attributes are most important for moo-ving plant-based milk, we conducted a sales driver analysis. When it comes to driving purchase and consideration rates, the taste, coolness, and affordability of plant-based milk are the most influential drivers. For some valuable coolness points consider making Bart Simpson your spokesperson with the tagline "Don’t have a cow, man."

Want to see the data? Curious about the methodology? Just reply to this email.

Is That Still Mom’s Password?

Moochers, the embodiment of “Hey, are you done with that?” Whether you’ve done the mooching or been mooched from, you’ve likely experienced the awkwardness of sending a text asking, “Hey, can you sign out of your Netflix account? The latest Love Is Blind live reunion starts soon.”

To call out both the moochers from the moochees, we asked Americans who pays for their services and subscriptions: themselves, a family member, or someone else. More than half of adults (59%) currently mooch off someone else for one of the below services or subscriptions.

Life essentials and common family bundles, like cell phone service, internet service, and health insurance, are the most frequently mooched services. It’s no surprise that Netflix is cracking down on password-sharing—25% of Americans mooch a Netflix login from someone else, yet only 16% of Americans admit to sharing their Netflix account with anyone else for free 🤔.

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have an idea for a research story? Want to see it in (digital) print? You can submit your own ideas for upcoming stories to our Trendlines idea repository.

Can't wait for more? Take a look at our public roadmap to see what's in store and vote on potential future Trendlines stories.

Do you know someone who’ll love this?

About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. To address this, Gradient partners with startups, Fortune 100 brands, consulting firms, and political campaigns who aren’t confident answering strategic and directional questions. Through our partnership we help these organizations achieve objective clarity by providing custom and actionable insights based on statistical rigor. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

Who’s Holdin’ Golden Oldies

Between the resurgence of ‘90s fashion trends (hello, scrunchies) and a steady stream of classic television reboots, it seems everything old is new again—within reason. For instance, Hollywood would be hard-pressed to remake that boombox scene from 1989's Say Anything today, equally because of its questionable relationship dynamics—and its Jurassic tech. 

Boomboxes, cassette players, record players, and VCRs—all analog machines struggling for relevance in a digital world. Heck, even first generation digital devices, like CD and DVD players, are endangered now that you can stream all media on one device. We asked Americans if they currently own these “old-school” items (not counting those in a vehicle).

More than half of Americans (63%) own a DVD player, despite being logged into at least one streaming service Mom still pays for. Like humpback whales and Baker Mayfield believers, maybe DVD players aren’t an endangered species anymore.

Conversely, cassette players and VHS players each only appear in 20% of American homes. A slightly larger number of Americans own a vinyl record player (27%), which might owe its resurgence to your hipster friend who lives in Williamsburg. You know the one.

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Mallin’ Outta Control

As any ‘80s or ‘90s kid will tell you, the mall is pretty radical. You can shop, loiter with your friends (not legal advice), and grab a soft pretzel from one of our nation’s many purveyors of salty twisted snacks. There might even be a Claire’s inside. What’s not to love? In fact, we love malls so much we wanted to see if the answer to the question "who loves the mall" is "them all.”

Turns out, we aren’t the only ones who love a good trip to the mall. Almost two thirds of Americans (63%) who have been to the mall in the last year go at least once a month and 13% go at least once a week. On the flip side, 8% go once a year or less frequently. Some people don’t know their Hot Topics from their Spencer’s.

Of the people who haven’t been to the mall in the last year, the most popular reason was because they can buy what they want online (36%). Hey, we get that online shopping is convenient, but is it as convenient as having a Hӓagen Dazs next to Cinnabon? The mall being too far away (27%) and being too crowded (27%) are the second and third most popular reasons Americans avoid the giant store filled with stores.

Want to see the data? Curious about the methodology? Just reply to this email.

From Leaven to Heaven

In December, we released some groundbaking research about America’s most preferred donuts. But the question remains: Do Americans even like donuts?

To no one’s surprise, 88% of Americans enjoy eating donuts. While donuts may be old-fashioned, Boomers (83%) are significantly less likely to enjoy donuts compared to other generations.

Last but not yeast, Americans really do run on Dunkin’ as 27% purchase donuts at least once a week. And when it comes time to eat a donut, one won’t suffice—half of Americans believe two donuts are an acceptable number to eat in a single sitting. But if we sit for a really long time, can we have three?

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have an idea for a research story? Want to see it in (digital) print? You can submit your own ideas for upcoming stories to our Trendlines idea repository.

Can't wait for more? Take a look at our public roadmap to see what's in store and vote on potential future Trendlines stories.

Do you know someone who’ll love this?

About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. To address this, Gradient partners with startups, Fortune 100 brands, consulting firms, and political campaigns who aren’t confident answering strategic and directional questions. Through our partnership we help these organizations achieve objective clarity by providing custom and actionable insights based on statistical rigor. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

Future Perfect

Between the AI apocalypse, climate change, and the inevitable heat death of the universe, it’s sometimes hard to be optimistic about the future. That’s why we like to find the silver lining in everything.

We dusted off our tried and true MaxDiff analysis to find out what events, if any, Americans are most excited for in 2024. After all, maybe we’ll enjoy being ruled by our computer overlords. At least we won’t have to do math anymore.

Whether it’s the commercials or the free concert at halftime, Americans say the Superbowl is the event they are most looking forward to in 2024. Since the Superbowl is in February, it seems the year peaks early for a lot of people. 

Evidently, many Americans are amateur astrologists astronomers, or maybe vampires, because the total solar eclipse is their second most anticipated event. The 2024 presidential election rounds out the top three events Americans are most eager to see on their calendars.

Despite the adaptation hosted by Snoop Dogg and Kelly Clarkson, Americans say they are least excited by Eurovision in 2024. If the organizers are listening, we’d like to suggest letting the US into the next Eurovision to drum up some more interest on this side of the pond. In defense of our inclusion, we likely won’t win but we’ll probably send Taylor Swift.

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Water? I Hardly Know Her

Americans are thirsty for change, traps, and… plain ol’ water. Only 19% of Americans state that they drink the recommended 64 ounces of water a day. A plurality of Americans (43%) who don’t typically consume their eight glasses a day blame their forgetfulness. Taken together, about 35% of Americans forget to drink the foundation of life. It’s almost as if dehydration leads to impaired short-term memory.

Thankfully, the vast majority of those who don’t consume enough water want to drink more (83%). Maybe we could invent some sort of device that makes noises at periodic intervals to remind people to do certain things. Nah, that would never work.

When it comes to water vessels, a majority of Americans (51%) prefer bottled water (submarine wasn’t an option). That’s right, most Americans are either harming their body by not drinking enough water or harming the environment by drinking from single-use bottles.

Perhaps we’re being too harsh. Among those who prefer drinking bottled water, one-fifth state they do not have safe drinking water. Moreover, 39% said their tap water doesn’t taste good, which may further indicate a lack of access to potable water. Please forget our judgmental comments and—if you already forgot—drink some water!

Want to see the data? Curious about the methodology? Just reply to this email.

One Nation, Under Snow

Yet another year when the residents of Hell, Michigan plead for the phrase "when hell freezes over" to be retired. These folks just can't seem to catch a break. Maybe when hell—never mind.

Eighty-eight percent of Americans experienced inclement weather last week as snow, ice, and abnormally cold temperatures battered regions as opposed as Portland, Oregon and Savannah, Georgia. If America was a cheerocracy, we know how we’d win this competition:

That’s a wrap, folks

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About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. To address this, Gradient partners with startups, Fortune 100 brands, consulting firms, and political campaigns who aren’t confident answering strategic and directional questions. Through our partnership we help these organizations achieve objective clarity by providing custom and actionable insights based on statistical rigor. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

Thinking Outside of the Box (Store)

Some people say Disney World is the happiest place on Earth, but since we're adults with full time jobs and 10-pound-jar-of-peanut-butter addictions, we propose an alternative: Costco. Given that Costco is already an expert in big, it must be a herculean task for their growth department to figure out how to go from really big to even more really big. To help, we pitched in and asked Americans why they have (or haven’t) joined Costco and other wholesale clubs.

Only a minority of Americans (40%) don’t belong to any wholesale club while the rest are currently members of at least one. Sam’s Club is more popular than an actual club on New Year’s Eve, with 37% of Americans saying they belong. Costco (35%) and BJ’s (16%) are Americans’ second and third most popular choice, respectively.

A majority of respondents who are currently members of Sam’s Club and BJ’s Wholesale Club cite location/distance as the reason they belong to those clubs instead of Costco (68% and 77% respectively). Those who don’t currently have any wholesale club memberships also cited location/distance as the primary reason, with cost of membership as the second most cited reason they don’t partake in the club lifestyle.

It’s like the old saying goes: location, location, location. Proximity is the strongest determining factor of which wholesale club membership Americans choose. In fact, most Americans with memberships belong to the club within a 30 minute drive of their residence. When Costco is one of multiple clubs in a respondent’s area, they are more likely to belong to Costco, or have multiple memberships where one is for Costco. We can definitely relate to these people, resisting those Costco hot dogs is the real labor of Hercules.

Do you work for an awesome brand (like Costco) that could use help reaching your target audience? Let us know and we can help you reach them!

Old McDonald Had A Computer: A, I, A, I, Oh (No!)

Twenty twenty-three was a revealing year, and we aren’t just talking about Britney Spears’ and Prince Harry’s memoirs. More revealing than any tell-all autobiography, 2023 showed us a glimpse of artificial intelligence’s (AI) potential. The drastic improvements in AI and its widespread popularity have many wondering what it has in store for us in 2024.

Four out of five Americans express at least some concern about the future of AI. Whether it be their naivete or their comfort with invasive technology, Gen Z (23%) is more than twice as likely as Boomers (10%) not to be concerned at all about the future of AI. Perhaps the Terminator and Matrix series have left the older generations more skeptical about giving technology too much power.

Regardless of generation, a majority of Americans (62%) believe AI poses an existential threat to humanity. Apparently, Gen Z thinks such a threat may be exactly what we need to rizz up the country.

Whether concerned about AI or not, 69% of Americans support the federal government's latest steps to regulate AI. Of all the regulations, Americans are most supportive of developing standards, tools, and tests to help ensure AI systems are safe, secure, and trustworthy. If Biden is taking requests, we’d also like all future AI-powered robots to be able to dance like the ones from Ex-Machina:

Want to see the data? Curious about the methodology? Just reply to this email.

Putting the “Toxic” in Masculinity

One of our resolutions this year is to stop using the phrase “toxic masculinity” if we don’t really mean it. It’s proven a challenge since it turns out men… sometimes… are more toxic—but not emotionally (that would require a different kind of survey), physically!

We asked Americans what remedies they use when sick with a cold or the flu. A majority of Americans subscribe to rest (79%), over-the-counter medication (78%), and/or home remedies (61%). In a twist sure to shock every woman in a heterosexual relationship who’s ever asked her male partner to “slow down” when he’s sick, women are more likely than men to partake in every remedy. For both over-the-counter meds and home remedies, women are significantly more likely to seek those treatments than men. Fellas, 🎵 we love what you do, but don’t you know that you’re toxic?🎵

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have an idea for a research story? Want to see it in (digital) print? You can submit your own ideas for upcoming stories to our Trendlines idea repository.

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About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. To address this, Gradient partners with startups, Fortune 100 brands, consulting firms, and political campaigns who aren’t confident answering strategic and directional questions. Through our partnership we help these organizations achieve objective clarity by providing custom and actionable insights based on statistical rigor. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

The Rebrews Are in: Ranking the Best Beer Brands

The year 2023 marks the 500th anniversary of Reinheitsgebot, the German beer purity law, which mandates that beer is only to be made with four ingredients: malt, hops, yeast, and water. Even non-traditional German beers don’t deviate much from the recipe, typically only swapping malt with rice or maize. So if most beers are relatively similar, do Americans have strong preferences, and, if so, how do consumers choose between brands?

RE: FWD: Postponing Pierre's Retirement Party

Earlier this year, French President Emmanuel Macron sidestepped Parliament to unilaterally bump up the retirement age in France from 62 to 64, sparking protests, civil unrest, and labor strikes that left Paris smellier than the Great Camembert Explosion of 1743.

In our own neck of the woods, retiree benefits like Social Security and Medicare have their necks in the guillotine as the national debt limit deadline looms and the GOP-controlled House vows to balance the budget. Yet Americans largely hold favorable views of the program, and (despite the Parisian issue) it’s hardly a partisan issue. And for good reason! The connection between Social Security and birthday checks from Grandma is undeniable.

It Might Sound Crazy but it Ain’t No Lie, it’s AI AI AI

In a world where Siri can send text messages and AI-generated deepfake videos are making headlines, it's getting harder to tell who's the real deal and who's an imposter. We decided to put the American public to the test by seeing if they could spot the difference between a human-written text and one written by an AI. The results were... well, you'll just have to read on to find out if the machines have finally taken over!

Saturday Morning Fever

You know you’re not a kid anymore when you spend your weekend in the doorknob aisle at Home Depot to see if they have that exact shade of bronze you need (they never do). It’s safe to say we miss the halcyon days when Saturday mornings were spent getting animated about animation: 94% of Americans report watching cartoons at least weekly when they were young, 56% of whom say they were most likely to watch on weekend mornings.

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have an idea for a research story? Want to see it in (digital) print? You can submit your own ideas for upcoming stories to our Trendlines idea repository.

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About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. To address this, Gradient partners with startups, Fortune 100 brands, consulting firms, and political campaigns who aren’t confident answering strategic and directional questions. Through our partnership we help these organizations achieve objective clarity by providing custom and actionable insights based on statistical rigor. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

Breaking: Added to the Olympics

To vie for the attention (and ad dollars) of America’s TikTok users, the International Olympic Committee decided to spice up its games roster with a whopping nine new sports during the next two Olympic cycles. Sadly for us, competitive survey-writing isn’t on the list, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed for 2032. 

For 2024, the famed inland city of Paris is making waves by showcasing surfing and breaking the mold for traditional Olympic expectations. Los Angeles in 2028 will be smashing it with squash (the Smashing Pumpkins were booked) and... cricket? Word on the street is that the locations for these events were originally swapped, but the Parisian committee was hesitant to add cricket to their already bug-infested city. 

We asked the American public which of the newly-added sports they generally want to watch on TV, and which ones they support adding to the Olympic roster. Even though Americans tend to be enthusiastic about watching the games, it seems audiences are reacting to the ever-expanding Olympic sports universe the same way they are to the never-ending Marvel Cinematic Universe: turning it off.

Besides baseball and breakdancing, the only reason an American would add a sport to the Olympics is perhaps so others can watch it. When asked about the new sports specifically, thirty-five percent of Americans said they wouldn’t be interested in watching any of them. So much for those ad dollars!

Are you one of the roughly 75% of Americans who are at least somewhat likely to tune into the Olympics? Let us know below!

Gradient Research Showcase

Iced to Meet You

Who has the best job in the world? No, not the person who gets to play with the otters at SeaWorld. The other best job in the world: people who make donuts. Or, if you are less inclined to bake, the people who market the donuts. 

When you’re getting a new donut business off the ground, the last thing you want is to get Dunk-ed on and, with so many variations of the holey treat, deciding on which ones to offer and market so customers come cruller-ing back is likely to keep you up at night. With that in mind, you’ll want to know what donuts people prefer before you preheat the ovens. At Gradient, we use our bespoke MaxDiff analysis to answer questions of customer preference.

To demonstrate how this MaxDiff works, we asked our survey of 1,000 Americans which donuts they prefer. In this delicious case, our research shows that the top three most preferred donuts are chocolate frosted, glazed (yeast), and Boston cream. Consumers prefer blueberry frosted, butternut, and plain donuts the least.

Unlike simple ranking exercises that only show the order of customer preference, a MaxDiff allows marketers to understand both the order and magnitude of customer preferences. With the MaxDiff below, we see that chocolate frosted donuts are not only the favorite, but also that people prefer it almost three times more than glazed (old fashioned) donuts. 

MaxDiffs also allow marketers to test a larger number of items than simple ranking questions, making them perfect for product decisions that have a lot of potential variations. Being able to test a larger number of items can better allow for patterns to emerge among items. For example, when it comes to donuts, chocolate is clearly king to consumers. Of the seven most preferred donuts, five have chocolate, either as a frosting, glaze, or base. 

Understanding that chocolate is a key component in the most preferred donuts can help guide a burgeoning bakery’s production and marketing decisions. So, if you want to compete with the big boys, whether it’s in donuts or some less delicious product research, a MaxDiff can often be the best tool for the job.

Curious about the product preferences (donut-related or otherwise) your consumers want? Let us know and we can help you identify them with a MaxDiff!

One Flu Over the Cough Cough's Nest

Although influenza sounds as fun as Lollapalooza, it’s certainly less of a party. The worst part is that for a plurality of Americans (39%), the flu is longer than the actual festival, with the illness typically lasting a week. 

The height of flu season is underway, and a whopping 31% of Americans have already had the flu. The cases are even higher for younger generations as Millenials and Gen Zers are about 19% more likely to have had the flu in the past six months than Boomers. 

Maybe influenza and Lollapalooza are more intricately tied than we thought! Or it could be the case that younger generations are more planners than doers when it comes to getting their flu shots: 

Want to see the data? Curious about the methodology? Just reply to this email.

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have an idea for a research story? Want to see it in (digital) print? You can submit your own ideas for upcoming stories to our Trendlines idea repository.

Can't wait for more? Take a look at our public roadmap to see what's in store and vote on potential future Trendlines stories.

Do you know someone who’ll love this?

About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. To address this, Gradient partners with startups, Fortune 100 brands, consulting firms, and political campaigns who aren’t confident answering strategic and directional questions. Through our partnership we help these organizations achieve objective clarity by providing custom and actionable insights based on statistical rigor. Want to learn more? Visit our website!

Unanimity Battle

There are two sides to every coin. Or are there? Sure, some might think that diversity of opinion is an essential and beautiful element of a free democratic society—but we decided to take it as a team-wide challenge certain to shake the foundations of democracy to its very core. Each member of Gradient’s goal? Get as many Americans as possible to agree with our opinion.

There were only two rules aside from “no touching of the hair or face”:

1. No statements of fact (example: "The sky is blue" or "I am currently taking a survey").

2. No wishy-washy language like "maybe" or "sometimes" (example: "There may be other life in the universe").

Were any of us able to get literally everybody on our side?

Touché, democracy. Our sinister plot to get everyone to agree on something came up just short. Almost everyone prefers to avoid being repeatedly punched in the face and being on fire for an extended period of time (97% each). Ironically, Cory has our team’s most punchable face.* But Brandon knows the thing that brings Americans together to sing “Kumbaya” around the campfire is they’d rather not sing it inside the campfire.

Speaking of Kumbaya, we’re surprised Sarah’s call for effortless world peace isn’t more popular. Death by peanut butter also doesn’t worry folks as much as it should. A small contingent of Americans is apparently okay with people getting hurt—so long as it’s not themselves.

But life can’t be all ice cream and hiring professionals. Michal probably would have been better off stating “I would rather be punched in the face than be asked to point to Laos on a map.” And we feel for Emmanuel, who is clearly the victim of Americans lying about snacking during previews. 

* Cory wants readers to know he wrote this joke and is not actually a victim of violent workplace bullying.

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Which Brands Wake Up and Smell the(ir) Coffee?

In theory, there is someone out there who wakes up in the morning, excited to greet the sun and engage in the work they're passionate about. But most of us get up solely for that sweet, sweet cup of joe. Everything else that happens during the day is incidental. 

Not only do the majority of Americans drink coffee (84%), but almost a quarter (23%) drink multiple cups a day. To all you single-cup drinkers using your coffee pot as a mug, it’s time to be honest about your addiction. It’s okay, we support your commitment to the java grind.

We know Americans drink a lot of coffee, but which brand do they most prefer to brew at home? To answer this question, we used the only thing that gives us a buzz comparable to that muddy go-go juice—the MaxDiff experiment.

Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks are America’s favorite drug dealer coffee suppliers. It may be the case that most individuals prefer coffees with notes of s’mores and maple syrup, as more traditional roasters like Illy and Stumptown produce America’s least preferred home brewed coffee. Now onto more important questions, like which coffee will make the hair on our necks stand up and turn our spit into lightning?

Want to see the data? Curious about the methodology? Just reply to this email.

Poor Man Toes

Whether it’s food, nuclear power, or your favorite animated characters, fusion is pretty great. After all, what’s better than one thing you love? Two things you love smashed together in a portmanteau. Because everyone knows that any good monstrosity creation is nothing without a name. No one would stuff a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey if it weren’t so appetizingly called Turducken. With the obvious appeal of Turducken in mind, and since we can’t ask Americans who they would most like to see stuffed, we decided to find out which celebrity couple fusions have the most appeal. Close enough!

Brangelina, a fusion of former couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s first names, ranks as the most popular, with a quarter of Americans saying it is their favmanteau. For more proof that celebrity culture peaked in the early aughts, Bennifer, a combination of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, ranked second with 19%. To be fair, Ben Affleck seems to be the biggest fan of the naming convention since he has been with two other famous Jennifers (Aniston and Garner) since the early 2000s.

That’s a wrap, folks

We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or other pieces of feedback? Please don't hesitate to respond to this email, we don't bite!

Do you have an idea for a research story? Want to see it in (digital) print? You can submit your own ideas for upcoming stories to our Trendlines idea repository.

Can't wait for more? Take a look at our public roadmap to see what's in store and vote on potential future Trendlines stories.

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About Gradient

Gradient is a cross-functional team of industry analysts, market researchers, data scientists, technologists, and storytellers who help organizations uncover missed opportunities, find new layers of clarity, and pioneer new directions with confidence and statistical integrity. We work with startups, Fortune 100 brands, consulting firms, and political campaigns.