ST. LOUIS — Nov. 15, 2021 — Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute, a consultancy specializing in leadership, company culture and customer loyalty, has announced a strategic partnership with Vrity, a data company dedicated to helping brands measure the financial impact of their values. The partnership will enhance Chapman & Co.’s Truly Human Loyalty solutions, enabling its customer loyalty consulting practice to leverage quantitative insights from Vrity’s Values Return Index (VRI) and help companies make focused, ROI-based decisions about using authentic brand values to deepen customer loyalty.
The catalyst for this partnership was a realization by both firms that the US marketplace is seeing a rapid rise in the “values economy,” as brand values and corporate alignment with social causes are having an increased impact on consumer decision-making across all age demographics.
As revealed through 2021 research by Chapman & Co., 60% of US consumers now say brand values (including a commitment to diversity and a positive company culture) influence their purchasing decisions. In Chapman & Co.’s study, customers identifying as “brand loyal” express the strongest focus on brand values when making purchasing decisions.
These findings are reinforced by research conducted by Vrity showing that 82% of consumers say they will pay more for brands that share their values—with 43% of respondents saying they would pay double.
“Every business is trying to crack the code of customer obsession,” said Barry Kirk, Chapman & Co. Principal and loyalty practice leader. “But, far too often, companies are neglecting one powerful tool they already have right at their fingertips—their brand values. The reason they hesitate is because it’s hard to quantify how you’re showing up in terms of values, and what impact that is having on your revenue. With this partnership, we will help businesses make their values a key lever in building customer loyalty, and measure the financial benefit of doing so, through Vrity’s market-leading VRI platform.”
Jesse Wolfersberger, CEO and Co-Founder of Vrity, further explained: “Values are the most important trend in marketing since digital. However, there has been a black hole of data, which prevents many brands from truly living their values. Data is confidence—confidence to set budgets, confidence to measure results, confidence to justify to executives that values are driving revenue. We see Chapman & Co., with its unique Truly Human Loyalty approach, as the perfect partner to leverage our values-based data and transform this information into game-changing customer loyalty strategies.”
Performing market research, and looking to establish an evergreen scoreboard to track its values alignment with key demographic segments, in relation to its competitors.
The joint offering between Chapman & Co. and Vrity will help companies:
- Understand how consumers perceive their brand across 20 core brand values categories;
- Determine how their brand identity aligns with the five key types of customer loyalty;
- Measure the financial impact their values are having on their business; and
- Create a strategic approach for integrating their values messaging into an ROI-positive customer loyalty approach.
The two firms see this joint offering as ideal for any company that is currently:
- Prioritizing its internal company culture and its values commitment, but isn’t sure if those efforts are connecting to customers;
- Investing in public relations to share with the market its values and commitment to social causes, but is struggling to quantify the business impact;
- Integrating values-based messaging into its marketing strategy, and seeking to verify the impact on customer engagement and loyalty; and/or
- Performing market research, and looking to establish an evergreen scoreboard to track its values alignment with key demographic segments, in relation to its competitors.