What brands miss about consumer behaviour
Marketers pride themselves on being close to the customer. They read the data, run the focus groups, scroll the dashboards. They convince themselves that they know why people buy. But more often than not, brands get it wrong. Not because they don’t care, but because they assume.
The false comfort of assumptions in marketing
Assumptions feel safe. People care most about price, so we plaster discounts everywhere. People want proof, so we bury them under specs and claims. People love innovation, so we write long paragraphs about the technology under the hood. The pattern is always the same: the brand talks to the rational brain, while the consumer decides with everything but.
A recent study with fashion retailers makes that disconnect painfully clear. Ask a sustainable fashion retailer why someone buys, and they’ll tell you it’s about style and price. They’re not wrong. Nobody walks into a store looking for “sustainability” as a garment. You want to look good in that dress before you care about its fibers.
Yet when you look at how these retailers market themselves, the story changes. Suddenly it’s all statistics about water saved, carbon reduced, and meticulous wording to avoid greenwashing claims. They presume style and price, but they market with lectures.
What behavioral science really tells us
Behavioral science shows us what actually drives behavior. People copy peers, not data points. They remember how a brand made them feel, not the technicalities of a product sheet. They act when the impact is tangible, not when it’s abstract. But brands keep falling back on what feels responsible, explainable, measurable: information. The result is a gap between what motivates people and what brands put in front of them.
This isn’t just a fashion problem. It’s visible everywhere. Tech brands that sell features instead of status. FMCG brands that talk sustainability while people buy on habit and taste. Financial services that overload customers with risk scenarios while trust is built on something far more human: reassurance. The assumption–action gap is universal.
How brands can close the assumption–action gap
Closing that gap takes courage. It means testing messages that lean on belonging instead of bargains. It means showing impact in ways that feel immediate and real. It means letting psychology and sociology into the boardroom, not just dashboards and market reports.
The lesson is simple, but easy to forget: consumers are not rational creatures waiting for more information. They are humans, messy and emotional, swayed by what feels good, what feels right, and what feels shared. The job of marketers is not to educate them into buying. It’s to meet them where they already are.
