Thanks for stopping by on the weekend.  As always, we invite you to take a few moments, click around, read some past posts, and before you go reflect or weigh-in on this week's discussion.

Perhaps it is a case of seeing what we want to see, but more and more readers are sending us interesting facts and figures suggesting that:

  1. Awareness for buying American-made products is growing, and
  2. Buying products Made in the USA is more important to people than most marketers realize.

Please forgive us as we have gathered this information over the past few weeks and we don't always have complete citations, but for the purpose of discussion: A USA Today Snapshot of results from a Schneider Associates/Sentient decision survey suggested that the percentage of customers whose purchasing decisions are influenced by products made in USA is steadily rising, from 48% in 2008 to 60% in 2011.  That 60% of shoppers are influenced in their product selection by whether an item is made in the USA is not news to us at USA Love List, yet very few business or marketing decisions address this desire.

Yesterday's guest poster from Bottica.com let us know that their style-hunting team attended a conference on trends and learned that purposeful purchasing is on the rise: 83% of Americans say they wish brands supported a cause and 46% of Americans are prepared to pay up to 15% more for a product they connect to a cause. A recent Huffington Post article concurred citing surveys indicating that a whopping 94% of consumers would switch brands to support a cause.

Do you think that supporting American jobs and buying products made in the USA is an important enough cause to broadly influence purchasing decisions? Do you sense that awareness of supporting Made in USA is growing?