Who Else Buys This? The Quiet Question Behind Every Purchase

Think about the last time you joined a gym, chose a hairdresser or picked a new coffee spot. At some point, probably without noticing, you glanced at the other customers. Were they people like you? People you’d like to be like? Or people you’d rather not be mistaken for?

It’s a slightly embarrassing question to admit to, which is why we rarely say it out loud. But it shapes a surprising number of buying decisions. Before most people ask “Is this good?”, they’ve already asked something quieter: “Who else buys this, and what does choosing it say about me?”

Three of the biggest themes in brand psychology right now all orbit that question. Customers trust other customers more than they trust advertising. They use brands to signal who they are. And they increasingly expect a brand’s values to show up in what it does, not just in what it says. Together, they suggest that a brand’s most persuasive message may not come from the brand at all.

One Like insight: People don’t only buy what you sell. They buy into who else is buying it.

From campaigns to conversations

For most of the last century, brands built trust by broadcasting. You paid for attention, polished the message and repeated it until people remembered. That still works for building familiarity. But when it comes to believing something, customers increasingly look sideways rather than up.

The numbers are striking. In a May 2026 survey of 2,250 social media users in the US, UK and Australia, Sprout Social asked whose product recommendations people trusted most. Everyday users came out far ahead at 57%. Subject-matter experts managed 26%, big influencers 9% and brand employees 8%. The most trusted voice, in other words, is someone with no particular authority except that they’re like you and have used the thing.

Edelman’s 2026 brand trust research, covering nearly 18,000 people in 15 countries, found the same pattern from a different angle. Unpaid voices such as friends, family and people similar to themselves were far more persuasive than paid brand messages, particularly among the two-thirds of people Edelman describes as having an insular mindset. Richard Edelman’s summary is blunt: “Conversations must start within narrow trust circles.”

This is why creators matter, and why the most effective ones often aren’t the most famous. Sprout found that smaller, niche creators were more likely than celebrities to be followed for a sense of community, and 81% of people said it mattered whether an influencer had actually used what they were promoting. A creator with 4,000 followers who genuinely loves your product may carry more weight than one with 400,000 who is reading from a brief.

Highlight: The most trusted voice in marketing belongs to someone who isn’t paid to have an opinion.

Buying who you are

Researchers Jonah Berger and Chip Heath described a wonderfully telling field study in a 2008 paper for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. University students who had been wearing a particular wristband stopped wearing it once students from the academically focused dormitory next door, a group they saw as “geeky”, started wearing it too. Nothing about the wristband had changed. What it said about the wearer had.

Berger and Heath’s point was that people use their choices to signal identity. We gravitate towards things that say “I’m one of these people” and drift away from things that might get us mistaken for someone else. It happens most in categories others can see: clothes, music, cars, where we eat and, increasingly, which brands we follow online.

Edelman’s 2026 research suggests this has intensified. Over half of respondents (54%) said they felt a connection to people who use the same brands they do, up eight points in five years. More surprisingly, around four in ten Gen Z and Millennial consumers said they used certain brands in secret to avoid judgement. People aren’t only hiding brands they’re embarrassed by. They’re managing what their choices say about them to the people around them.

For a business, this is both an opportunity and a warning. Your customers are part of your brand, whether you planned it that way or not. The people in your shop, your reviews and your social comments are telling every newcomer what kind of place this is. A brand trying to be for everyone can end up signalling nothing in particular, which is rarely a comfortable thing for anyone to wear.

Highlight: Your customers are part of your brand. Every new customer is looking at them to decide whether they belong.

Values only count when people can see them

If customers use brands to say who they are, it follows that a brand’s values become part of that statement. This is the logic behind ethical and purpose-led branding, and why Patagonia is held up so often as the example everyone else should follow.

But there’s a long-standing puzzle here. Ask people whether they care about sustainability and most say yes. McKinsey notes that a 2020 survey found more than 60% of US consumers would pay more for sustainable packaging. Yet many companies have launched ethical products only to watch sales fall short. Somewhere between the survey and the checkout, good intentions seem to wander off.

McKinsey and NielsenIQ tried to settle the question by looking at what people actually bought rather than what they said. Their 2023 analysis tracked five years of US sales across 600,000 products. Items carrying environmental or social claims grew by an average of 28%, compared with 20% for products without them. The more revealing detail came next: products making several different kinds of claims grew about twice as fast as those making just one. The researchers suggested that a pattern of commitments may simply look more believable than a single badge.

The study shows correlation rather than cause, and the authors are careful to say they didn’t check whether the claims were true. Still, the pattern fits everything else in this article. People respond to values they can see expressed consistently, in more than one place, over time. A single slogan can look like marketing. A run of small, consistent choices starts to look like character.

For most small businesses, this is less about grand causes than about everyday integrity. Paying suppliers on time. Being honest about delays. Sourcing locally if you say you do. These are values too, and they’re the ones customers are most likely to notice and pass on.

What this means for a small business

It’s tempting to read all this and conclude that every business now needs a creator strategy, a community manager and a purpose statement. Some will. But the research points to something simpler, and more within reach.

The voices customers trust most are other customers, and small businesses are usually closer to their customers than any big brand can be. You can know your regulars by name, introduce them to each other and give them reasons to talk about you. A community rarely starts as a campaign. It tends to grow around a place, a habit or a shared interest that the business makes easier.

Your own team counts too. In the Sprout Social survey, 40% of consumers found content from a brand’s employees more authentic than its official account, rising to 51% among Gen Z. The person who makes the coffee, fits the kitchen or answers the phone may be a more convincing ambassador than any polished post.

A few questions are worth asking:

• If a stranger looked at our customers, what would they conclude about who we’re for?
• Where do our customers already talk to each other, and how could we make that easier?
• Which of our values could a customer actually see, without us pointing them out?
• Is there anything we say about ourselves that our customers would struggle to confirm?

Back to that quiet glance at the other customers when you walk in somewhere new. You’re not really asking whether the business is good. You’re asking whether people like you are happy there. The most persuasive thing a small business can do is make sure the answer is visible.

Sources

1. Sprout Social, Q2 2026 Pulse Survey. Survey by Glimpse of 2,250 social media users in the US, UK and Australia, 14–20 May 2026.
2. Richard Edelman, “Trust and Relevance Together Unlock Brand Growth in an Insular World”, 20 June 2026. Summary of the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report (17,688 respondents, 15 countries).
3. Jonah Berger and Chip Heath, “Who Drives Divergence? Identity Signaling, Outgroup Dissimilarity, and the Abandonment of Cultural Tastes”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95(3), 2008.
4. Jordan Bar Am, Vinit Doshi, Anandi Malik, Steve Noble (McKinsey) and Sherry Frey (NielsenIQ), “Consumers care about sustainability—and back it up with their wallets”, McKinsey, 6 February 2023.