The longer you run a business, the easier it becomes to assume you know exactly why customers choose you. But assumptions have a way of piling up—shaped by success, reinforced by data, and rarely questioned.

I was reminded of this recently in conversations with a new client: smart, successful, data-rich—and yet at risk of overlooking the very thing that matters most. In every market, one truth separates thriving brands from fading ones: preference is everything.

Awareness might get you noticed. Consideration might get you shortlisted. But preference—the instinctive pull toward your brand over another—is what wins business, keeps it, and turns buyers into advocates.

What Are Key Drivers of Preference?

Key drivers of preference are the specific, high-impact factors that influence a customer’s decision to choose your brand instead of someone else’s.

They can be rational or emotional:

• Rational: price, convenience, product quality, speed

• Emotional: trust, identity alignment, status, sense of belonging

Sometimes these drivers are obvious. More often, though, they’re buried under layers of assumptions, internal bias, or outdated market data.

However, it’s important to remember that drivers change over time. The reasons your customers chose you five years ago may not be the reasons they choose you now. Sometimes those old drivers don’t matter at all anymore, which is why the process needs to be ongoing.

A Common Mistake

Leaders often confuse stated reasons with actual reasons. Customers might say they love your brand for its customer service, but the data might show it’s really your new product launches that keep them coming back.

When organizations fail to uncover these revealed drivers, they make misguided investments, pouring resources into areas that don’t move the needle, while neglecting the ones that do.That’s why identifying your key drivers is an ongoing discipline.

Done well, it gives you a clear set of levers to pull when you need to grow, defend market share, or enter new categories.

The Key Drivers of Preference Framework

Here's a simple, repeatable process for uncovering—and protecting—your brand’s true drivers of preference.

From Insight to Habit

Knowing your drivers is really only step one. The real advantage comes from embedding them into everything you do—your brand strategy, product roadmap, marketing, and customer experience.

If a decision doesn’t reinforce a driver, ask if it’s worth doing at all. Then, go back and check again. Markets shift. Competitors evolve. Customers change. The brands that last are the ones that make finding, validating, and protecting their key drivers a permanent part of the job.

Because preference is earned, not assumed. And you have to earn it again every single day.