Understanding Key Drivers of Preference

Over the past year, I’ve had the chance to study entrepreneurship at both Babson College—the number one college for entrepreneurship 31 years running—and MIT.

Both were intense in their own ways, but what struck me is how their core frameworks—Babson’s Entrepreneurial Thought & Action and MIT’s Disciplined Entrepreneurship—are relentlessly customer-focused.

It’s obvious in theory—this idea that we should build around what the customer needs, not just what you want to make—but easy to forget in practice.

Running a business, leading a team, and chasing growth all have a way leading to a growing pile of assumptions about what your customers actually think of you.

Lately, this has been on my mind even more as I’ve been pitching strategy work to a new client.

They’re smart, successful, and data-rich—which are all strengths, to be sure—but also carry with them the risk of creating blind spots.

The conversations have had me thinking hard about key drivers of preference—the real reasons customers choose one brand over another, and how easy it is to get those reasons wrong.

In every market, there’s one truth that 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 and keeps it.

It’s what turns one-time buyers into repeat customers, and repeat customers 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 More often,  though, they’re buried under layers of assumptions, internal bias, or outdated market data.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.