RESEARCH
All researchYou sell trust.
Business buyers pay for feelings too. What they pay for is confidence in a choice they will have to defend.
more likely to say they would pay a higher price, when the buyer saw personal value in the brand: 68.8% against 8.5%.
CEB WITH GOOGLE AND MOTISTA, 2013 · 3,000 B2B BUYERS, 36 BRANDSLIMIT · WHAT BUYERS SAID THEY WOULD DO, NOT WHAT THEY PAID. PUBLISHED BY AN ADVISORY FIRM WITH GOOGLE.The question.
A drinks company can sell a feeling: Coca-Cola's slogan from 2009 to 2016 was Open Happiness. A company that sells complex technology to other companies tends to assume its buyers work differently, and decide on the specification. Do they? And if a business buyer pays for a feeling too, which one?
How we know.
CEB's Marketing Leadership Council, with Google and the research firm Motista, surveyed 3,000 purchasers of 36 business-to-business brands in seven categories, and interviewed leaders at 50 marketing organisations. The report, From Promotion to Emotion, was published in 2013. It compared buyers who saw personal value in a brand, such as confidence and pride in the choice, with buyers who saw none. We read it alongside four other sources: a 2011 paper on purchase risk, two Gartner buyer surveys published in 2025 and 2026, and a 1997 paper on trust between buyers and suppliers.
What it means.
A buyer of deep tech or industrial equipment often cannot check the science, and puts their name to the choice anyway. The research suggests that what moves the price is whether the choice does something for the person making it, and whether they can carry it to the colleagues who must agree, five to 16 of them by Gartner's description. We call that feeling trust. It is built from things a stranger can check, so it cannot stand in for a product that works.
With personal value, and without.
SHARE OF BUYERS WHO SAID THEY WOULDCEB AND MOTISTA SURVEY, 2013 · 3,000 B2B BUYERS. STATED INTENT, NOT RECORDED PURCHASES.
Three more pieces of evidence.
WHAT ELSE POINTS THE SAME WAYThe other 86% said no, so for most buyers the offer alone does not earn a higher price.
It was lowest in between, and we would not call a first order of new technology a moderate risk.
Confidence in the decision goes with how buyers rate the deal afterwards.
In depth.
THE LONG READWhat the survey found.
In 2013 CEB's Marketing Leadership Council, working with Google and the research firm Motista, surveyed 3,000 purchasers of 36 business-to-business brands. The brands came from seven categories: industrial supplies, professional services, technology security, software, network equipment, shipping and printing. The report is called From Promotion to Emotion. It split buyers by whether they saw personal value in a brand, which it defines as the combination of professional, social, emotional and self-image benefits. Google's summary of the work gives two examples: opportunity for career advancement, and confidence and pride in the choice. Of the buyers who saw personal value, 68.8% said they would pay a higher price and 71.0% said they would purchase. Of those who saw none, 8.5% and 22.6%. That is the source of the often quoted figure: buyers were 8 times more likely to pay a premium for a comparable product when personal value was present. Across the commercial outcomes the report tested, personal value had twice as much impact as business value.
Why a business purchase is personal.
The same CEB report gives a reason. It says business purchases entail personal risks, far more than most consumer purchases. It lists three things the people involved fear: losing time and effort if the decision goes poorly, losing credibility if they recommended a purchase that fails, and losing their job if they were responsible for it. The more of those risks buyers perceived, the stronger their emotional connection to the brand. Google's summary adds that of the nine business brands compared, seven had an emotional connection with more than half of their customers. Most of the hundreds of consumer brands Motista had studied reached between 10% and 40%. An academic study points the same way. In 2011 Brown, Zablah, Bellenger and Johnston reported two field studies, one built on a scenario and one on a survey, with 206 and 180 members of buying centres, in the International Journal of Research in Marketing. How much the brand mattered followed a U shape: highest at low and at high purchase risk, lowest in the middle.
The choice has to be defended.
A business purchase is rarely one person's decision. A Gartner analyst describes buying groups of five to 16 people, from as many as four functions. Gartner surveyed 632 business buyers in August and September 2024 and found that 74% of buyer teams showed what it calls unhealthy conflict during the decision. Groups that reached consensus were 2.5 times more likely to say the deal was high quality. A second Gartner survey, of 646 business buyers in August and September 2025, found that 67% prefer to buy without a sales representative. It also found that confident buyers were twice as likely to report a high-quality deal as buyers with low confidence in their decision. Put the two together. The person who chooses you often does it without you in the room, and then has to carry the choice to colleagues from other functions, some of whom cannot judge the technology. That last step is our reading, not a Gartner finding.
What the research does not show.
None of this measures money changing hands. The CEB figures are what buyers said they would do, in a survey published by an advisory firm for marketing leaders together with Google, which sells advertising. The report gives no fieldwork dates, countries or response rate, and its own text discusses the comparison for people who were not yet customers of the brand. The 14% figure, for buyers who see a difference between suppliers worth paying for, comes from an earlier CEB survey of 9,000 customers, dated 2009 and reprinted in the same report. Gartner's numbers come from press releases, not full papers. And trust is not a shortcut. In 1997 Doney and Cannon tested a model of trust on data from more than 200 purchasing managers, in the Journal of Marketing. Trust in the supplier shaped whether buyers expected to deal with that supplier again. Once past experience and the supplier's performance were controlled for, it did not decide the current choice of supplier.
What trust is made of.
The research says buyers pay for what a choice does for them. It does not say what to build. Here is how we see it, and it is our view, not a study's. In deep tech, the feeling a buyer pays for is trust, and it has three parts. Credibility: they believe you, because you give them proof they can check, with real people and real results, named and easy to find. Authority: they see you as the one who knows, because you say what you believe about your field and publish it. Security: they feel safe choosing you, because there are no surprises, the same look and the same story everywhere you show up. None of the three can be faked for long. Credibility needs proof, authority needs a real point of view, and security needs you to be consistent. Doney and Cannon's result is the reminder that the product still has to perform. You can only sell trust you have earned.
What to do with it.
THREE PARTS OF TRUST, AS WE SEE ITGive them proof they can check.
Real people and real results, named and easy to find. Can a stranger check what you claim?
Publish a point of view.
Say what you believe about your field, and put your name to it. Do people quote it?
Remove the surprises.
The same look and the same story everywhere you show up. Does every piece look like the same company?
ONE QUESTION
Which part of trust is emptiest for you: credibility, authority or security?
Pick one and start there: proof a stranger can check, a point of view you publish, or the same story everywhere you show up.
Asked about this research.
NOT ANSWERED HERE?
tony@appart.giEVERY FIGURE HAS A SOURCE
Sources and limits.
- CEB WITH GOOGLE, 2013CEB Marketing Leadership Council in partnership with Google, 2013. From Promotion to Emotion: Connecting B2B Customers to Brands. The Corporate Executive Board Company. CEB and Motista survey of 3,000 B2B buyers across 36 brands and 7 categories, with interviews at 50 B2B marketing organisations.
- GOOGLE AND CEB, 2013Sam Nathan (Google) and Karl Schmidt (CEB), October 2013. From Promotion to Emotion: Connecting B2B Customers to Brands. Think with Google. The article that states the 8 times figure and the examples of personal value.
- CEB, 2009CEB Customer Experience Survey, 2009. 9,000 customers. Source of the 14% figure, as reprinted in the 2013 report.
- BROWN AND COLLEAGUES, 2011Brown, B.P., Zablah, A.R., Bellenger, D.N. and Johnston, W.J., 2011. When do B2B brands influence the decision making of organizational buyers? An examination of the relationship between purchase risk and brand sensitivity. International Journal of Research in Marketing 28(3), 194 to 204. Two field studies, 206 and 180 buying centre members.
- GARTNER, 2025Gartner press release, 7 May 2025. Gartner Sales Survey Finds 74% of B2B Buyer Teams Demonstrate Unhealthy Conflict During The Decision Process. Survey of 632 B2B buyers, August to September 2024. The five to 16 figure is an analyst's statement in the release.
- GARTNER, 2026Gartner press release, 9 March 2026. Gartner Sales Survey Finds 67% of B2B Buyers Prefer a Rep-Free Experience. Survey of 646 B2B buyers, August to September 2025.
- DONEY AND CANNON, 1997Doney, P.M. and Cannon, J.P., 1997. An Examination of the Nature of Trust in Buyer-Seller Relationships. Journal of Marketing 61(2), 35 to 51. More than 200 purchasing managers.
- SLOGANFortune, 19 January 2016, and Marketing Dive, 19 January 2016, on Coca-Cola replacing Open Happiness, in use since 2009, with Taste the Feeling.
- LIMITSThe CEB figures are stated intent from one survey, published by CEB and Google, with no fieldwork dates, countries or response rate given. The 14% comes from a separate 2009 survey. Brown and colleagues, and Doney and Cannon, were read as abstracts, and one of Brown's two studies used a scenario. Gartner was read as press releases. The three parts of trust are our view, not a finding.
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