Most marketers say they “know their consumers.”
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/grahamrobertson1_analyzing-consumers-activity-7410303401311436800-BEVN/?utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAAABsAp0BM2ls8tbs49cxhJ4ApfZhypHe9lw&utm_source=social_share_send&utm_campaign=gmail
Very few can prove it.
Knowing consumers isn’t about personas or clever insights.
It’s about being able to answer hard questions with data.
In a proper deep-dive business review, consumer analysis isn’t a section.
It’s the engine.
Here’s what the best marketers actually look at:
• Who is buying (penetration)
• How often they buy (frequency)
• How much they buy (sales per trip)
• Where they drop out of the funnel
• Why they choose you—or don’t
Sales = households × penetration × buying rate.
If you can’t explain what’s driving each lever, you’re guessing.
Great consumer analysis forces tough choices:
– Penetration or frequency (never both at once)
– Where the funnel is leaking
– Which consumers actually matter
– Which “insights” are just noise
And it replaces opinions with facts:
• Taste drives trial-to-purchase
• Perceptions drive loyalty
• Habits drive growth
• Emotion explains behavior, data confirms it
This is why so many plans fail.
Not because teams aren’t working hard, but because they’re making decisions without understanding how consumers really shop, decide, and repeat.
Consumer analysis isn’t research for research’s sake.
It’s how you decide where to invest, what to fix, and what to stop doing.
If your brand plan doesn’t start here,
everything that follows is built on sand.
