The Relationship between Consumers‘ Characteristics and the Expectations towards a Brand‘s Value

Purpose: The subject of this article is the identification and evaluation of communicated values and values actually declared by consumers' gender and age. Design/Methodology/Approach: The article presents a research approach based on a literature query and empirical research. Beginning by presenting the essence of both material and non-material values in marketing, the focus is on the values pyramid communicated by brands. The empirical research was conducted by the method of a diagnostic survey using a questionnaire on a representative sample of 1000 respondents. The principal research was preceded by a pilot survey. The research results were statistically processed using the Chi-square test of independence, the Mann–Whitney U test, the Kruskal–Wallis test, post-hoc Dunn test with Benjamini-Hochberg correction. Findings: The research analysis indicates differences in the assessment of declared and expected values towards cosmetic product brands between women and men, in particular concerning functional and life-changing values. The assessment of the declared and expected values also changes depending on age. Substantially different assessment is shown by the group of the youngest respondents. A particular difference is noticeable concerning the aesthetic value, the brand prestige and the heritage, tradition, as well as brand history. Practical Implications: To develop the brand management capability, organizations may benefit from cultivating processes that seek to meet the latent customer needs through explorative and proactive information seeking, and at the same time, pursuing processes that focus on capturing the existing customer and competitor trends in the market. Originality/Value: This study borrows from the existing research on market orientation, branding and brand management to argue that organizations are required to verify the actual expected values towards brands. Enterprises should also verify the consistency of the values declared by brands with those actually expected by consumers.