Mindspeller sheds light on the drivers of decision making by comparing USP and FedEX

According to a July 2021 post by e-marketer.com, e-commerce is well on track to surpass 20% of total retail by 2024. That’s good news for the package delivery industry dominated by companies such as FedEx and UPS who can use their established worldwide logistics network to their maximum advantage. But imagine you’re presented with the option to choose between these competitors – who would you prefer and why? Mindspeller sheds light on what really influences decision-making.

Consumer neuroscience teaches us that you are likely to prefer brands that best match your implicit goals. For a package delivery service, we assume concepts like ‘fast’, ‘quick’, ‘on time’ or perhaps ‘trustworthy’ might reflect your main implicit goal.


Mindspeller’s Competitive Profiler allows us to reveal which concepts differentiate our two competitors most in people’s minds. A quick scan reveals a clear winner. Almost all of the FedEx associations resonate with the ‘timing’ related goals of the customer. Associations with ‘brown’ ‘cardboard’ ‘boxes’ seem to differentiate UPS the most when facing FedEx. These associations might be stereotypical archetypes of the delivery service as a category. But they don’t evoke any emotions or experiences that would help them stand out among the competition or connect with our customer’s implicit goal. They certainly don’t represent the most sexy part of the delivery service.
 

We can now relate jumps and trends in the association score to historical investments in brand campaigns. Understanding these relations enable brand managers to better predict top of mind consumer preferences.