Main St. American Values Study

The Main St. American Values Study is our proprietary brand framework designed to help brands build deeper connections with consumers while avoiding the risk of being quietly disqualified from consideration. By combining universal, aspirational, and deep identity-driven values, this framework shows brands how to capture and keep people by appealing to their deepest beliefs.

Our approach has yielded a new framework for how values drive brand growth: a directive indicating the power of a values-aligned customer and the risk of invisibility as a brand if you miss connecting with the moral floor. To move beyond stated importance and understand real impact, we applied advanced analytics to isolate which values actually influence brand perceptions.

Americans aren’t divided on values. But values are layered.

The values Americans hold personally, expect from society, and want from brands don’t line up neatly. But underneath the complexity, there’s unity, with nearly everyone saying trust, respect, and integrity matter.

The values everyone agrees on don’t help brands stand out. They just keep them in the game.

Over 95% of Americans say these universal values like trust, respect and integrity matter personally, and they assume brands will show up with them no matter the context. Brands won’t win by having these values, but they’ll lose if they don’t.

They set the floor but cannot build the ceiling.

Brand implication: Universal values create no differentiation because no brand can own what everyone holds. But any brand that is perceived as lacking them pays a high price — in credibility, trust, and advocacy.

The real growth comes from the values that tap into consumer aspirations and identity

Once brands clear that baseline, differentiation comes from two other layers of values that actually drive affinity, consideration, and growth.

1. Reach values tap into aspiration
   They reflect who people want to be or become. They scale easily and travel well across most audiences. Reach values are either aspirational in behavior (these include sustainability, inclusion, and community) and/or aspirational in character (including ambition, belonging, and optimism).
2. Roots values tap into identity
   They reflect who people already are. They are emotionally loaded and can build deeper connections for specific audiences, but they carry more risk too, as they can alienate others if misaligned. Roots values occupy a special place where they are close to people’s true selves and brands can relate to them (these include patriotism, heritage, tradition, and religion).

How to apply the values framework in practice

Applying the framework starts with understanding your audience, not picking values off a list.

Key questions to ask yourself if you’re a brand or marketer:

Guardrail: This is not a paint-by-the-numbers exercise. The right combination of values will differ by brand, category, and audience. As a reminder, values shift by life stage, generation, and belief systems. So yes, the same framework applies, but how exactly it shows up should flex.

The takeaway: Brands that connect across all three layers have the strongest opportunity to build relevance, resonance, and long-term loyalty.

It isn’t about standing for more values. It’s about standing for the ones that actually drive choice.

And expressing them in a way that people will recognize.

Methodology

Unless otherwise specified, data featured in this report comes from a study of 5,000 US adults, ages 18–74, conducted online in February and March 2026.

We tested a set of 33 values, developed through an in-depth review of existing American values research, including but not limited to Gallup, PRRI, and Pew Research Center foundational academic frameworks. This ensured coverage of both enduring core values (e.g., family, freedom, fairness) and emerging, identity-linked values (e.g., inclusion, sustainability, patriotism).