the new consumer decision journey

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The consumer decision journey.

14 min read Understanding the consumer decision journey – and working with what you learn – can help your marketing efforts, customer support teams, and product rollouts thrive. Here’s everything you need to know…

Author:  Adam Bunker

Subject Matter Expert: Dave Pabley

What is the consumer decision journey?

The ‘consumer decision journey’ is the name given to a framework that deconstructs and explores the myriad factors that go into customer purchases. In other words: it’s the way we make sense of the consumer decision-making process.

Did you know that 70% of buyers fully define their own purchasing needs before they engage with sales people? If not, you might need to rethink what your customer decision journeys look like, and how you work to manage them.

Every time a customer buys something from a brand, it’s the result of a complicated set of processes and influences that –   often – they’ve experienced in a nonlinear fashion. The consumer decision journey is a means to map and understand that path, with a view to try and meet potential future customers at every touchpoint along the way.

Understanding how and why new and previous customers make purchases is the holy grail of every marketing department in the world. And if you can actually influence those factors with your CX and marketing strategy? Even better. Doing that means unpicking the complicated rationale and stop-start nature of today’s buying journeys.

Understanding the consumer decision journey is really about asking a few key questions:

• How can you meet your customers at important touchpoints?
• How can you maximize each interaction?
• What goes into each purchase decision?

If you have answers to those questions, you’ll go a long way toward ensuring you have the right processes, resources, and technology in place to help your business grow its customer base. You’ll know how and when to upsell, how to convert prospects, and what influences each and every purchase.

That’s a complicated task, but digging into customer analysis can really pay off – in some pretty meaningful ways.

Free course: Elevate your customer journey management today

‘Customer managed’ journey versus a ‘managed customer’ journey

Today’s customer is increasingly empowered in their decision-making, since they have access to much more choice, information, and branded content across a range of channels.

As such, it’s important that brands understand their role in the decision-making process. In most instances, things can’t be controlled in a streamlined way on the brand side – it’s the customer in control. That means organizations need to be adaptable, responsive, and able to meet the customer where they are, rather than the other way round.

While you might map out a perfect, best-case journey for your customer personas – a managed customer journey – things may not pan out that way. This gives rise to the idea of the ‘customer managed’ journey instead – one where your customers call the shots in terms of how they make their decisions, and you cater as best you can to their preferences.

Why is the consumer decision journey important?

Customer interactions and the journeys they create are more complicated, nonlinear, and omnichannel than ever. But that presents an opportunity: the brands that can leverage the tools at their disposal to unpick that complicated knot stand a great chance at winning over more customers than their competitors.

Today’s customers aren’t easily influenced or led down a specific path. Whereas in decades gone by you might easily nurture a customer down the sales funnel with a compelling TV ad and then an in-store salesperson, things are different now. In fact, even if you manage to get customers into your physical store, some 71% of them will still be using their phones to look up reviews or even to make their purchases.

95% of consumers read online reviews before making purchases, which can take the wind out of any marketing efforts’ sails if there’s no real strategy in place to maximize other customer journey touchpoints. In fact, chances are that by the time a customer speaks to a representative, they’re already most of the way along the buying process.

That means meeting your customers where they are – like online influencer accounts, for example, which 55% of 18-24-year-olds rely on.

Whatever the case, it’s important to understand the factors that influence buying decisions because that lets you personalize and tailor those experiences as best you can to capture more interest.

Beyond this though, getting to grips with the consumer decision journey means understanding that the journey doesn’t end with a purchase – that’s just part of a cyclical experience.

So let’s explore how that works…

Understanding how consumers make decisions

In the traditional purchasing funnel, customers move along the stages from awareness to purchasing and customer loyalty linearly, beginning with a widely cast net of possible brands, and ending with just one. But that model’s now outdated.

Today, customers move from touchpoint to touchpoint in a way that makes it impossible to put importance on any one part of the funnel over any other. Instead, the decision journey is cyclical – and capturing attention needs to be handled as part of a two-way conversation at every stage.

McKinsey’s research , involving some 20,000 consumers, has resulted in a new framework for the decision journey that it describes as having four interlinked phases:

“The decision-making process is a more circular journey, with four primary phases representing potential battlegrounds where marketers can win or lose: initial consideration; active evaluation, or the process of researching potential purchases; closure, when consumers buy brands; and postpurchase, when consumers experience them.”

Image credit: McKinsey.com

In fact, the journey here is more of a spiral than a circle; it’s in that fourth, post-purchase stage where the decision journey becomes a ‘loyalty loop’ that can repeat itself forever. McKinsey puts forward the following roadmap for those latter stages:

• Purchasing: After initial consideration, the customer makes a purchase
• Experiencing: The customer forms opinions on the product or service
• Advocating: The customer spreads the word
• Bonding: The customer becomes a loyal customer who makes repeat purchases

Tools and processes for enhancing customer journeys

Understanding the modern customer journey and adapting to it are two very different things. Customers expect more than ever before from their brands in terms of personalization , relevance, and the ability to meet them where they are, on the channels they care about.

That means that customer experience and marketing teams need to employ processes that can make every touchpoint work harder. Usually, that means using a mix of surveys , customer experience analytics software , and behavioral data to finetune every channel and provide more powerful, personal and adaptable experiences.

Let’s take a look at some of the methods, tools and processes you can use to do exactly that, across three key areas:

1. Omnichannel engagement

Your customers are moving between channels and platforms in search of the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions. You need to be where they are.

Customer touchpoint analysis

Take stock of every touchpoint in which customers can interact with your brand. That’s everything from your website to your customer service portal, as well as TV ads, social media channels and third-party review sites.

Your first step here is to lean into digital analytics to understand your share of voice, your conversion rate on call-to-action links, and anywhere you’re underrepresenting yourself. This stage is an audit, in effect – are you meeting people where they already are?

Omnichannel customer engagement

Once you understand every touch point, you need to think about how you can tie them together. Customers may jump from one touchpoint to the next in any order, so you need to be able to offer them a consistent experience that’s channel-agnostic.

That’s as important in marketing as it is in customer service – both rely on being able to track customer movements and proactively engage with people.

Customer journey optimization

Journey optimization starts with customer journey mapping exercises, in which you use customer data and your own insight to map out potential routes your customers take toward purchase. How can those journeys be tightened and streamlined? Hypothesize around this, make changes, and then test to see whether things improved.

2. Behavioral analysis

How well do you understand what makes your customers tick? With the right software, you’ll be able to glean invaluable insights from the actions your customers do and don’t take.

Consumer behavior analysis

Understanding customer behavior allows you to adapt things to suit them – and identify where pain points and areas of friction lie. You’ll achieve this by using customer experience analytics suites capable of understanding behavioral heuristics.

These tools can identify patterns, show you how different audience segments act, and how purchasing decisions act as part of a wider whole.

Behavioral targeting strategies

Imagine if you knew that a specific customer always shops for a certain kind of product at certain times of the year, that they’re much more likely to make a purchase if there’s a discount with their name on it, or if bundling two items together will make them much more appealing than the sum of their parts.

These are examples of behavioral targeting strategies that require a rock-solid understanding of each and every customer – and customer segment. Tools like Experience ID can help you gather that understanding, and tailor your efforts accordingly.

Refining the purchase decision process

It’s important to understand areas of your customer experience that are letting things down – and negatively impacting the customer buying process. If you can track customers as they move through your owned digital properties, you’ll have a clear idea of where people are dropping off, and why shopping carts are being left abandoned.

With that information, you can make proactive changes to the user experience in order to refine that initial consideration stage and better influence consumer purchasing behavior.

Learn more about customer behavior analysis

3. Postpurchase excellence

Once a customer has made a purchase, they’ll move into that inner ‘loyalty loop’ track of the consumer decision journey. This is your chance to wow them with postpurchase excellence – and generate real loyalty .

Customer experience analytics

Customer experience analytics is the process of collecting and analyzing customer data so that you can better understand customer needs, viewpoints, and experiences. This will help you to increase customer engagement and customer loyalty at every part of their journey – not just after making a purchase.

If you can understand the experience as it stands for existing customers, you’ll be able to direct your internal teams to take action on issues that are affecting satisfaction and loyalty.

Curating the customer engagement journey

Customer service is a huge part of postpurchase (repeat) purchase decisions. If a customer has had a positive customer support experience, they’re much more likely to buy from you again. So it’s important that this side of the customer experience is being monitored and managed.

Contact center management tools with AI and natural language processing can help here, by scanning and understanding every interaction every customer has with your business and proactively suggesting where things can be improved. That could be through trends that a bunch of different customers all mention, or by spotting opportunities for support agent coaching.

Customer lifecycle management

To keep customers coming back, you need to be able to keep a good eye on their behavior and ensure that if they have feedback, you’re able to close the loop by making the changes they want to see.

That’s alongside continually delighting them with proactive, personalized offers and communications. Keeping customers for the long haul means fostering a human-centric approach that uses software, surveys and analytics to help you show just how much you value their business.

Delivering customer-driven journeys

The consumer decision journey represents a complex, ever-evolving landscape that demands a really nuanced and adaptive approach from businesses. In an era where digital platforms dominate and consumer behaviors shift rapidly, understanding journeys from a scientific perspective is not just beneficial – it’s imperative for sustained success.

By embracing journey insights, businesses can position themselves at critical touchpoints, offering personalized solutions that resonate with consumers’ needs and preferences at the right moments. Integrating advanced analytics, omnichannel strategies and customer-centric thinking is what’ll help you exceed the expectations of today’s savvy consumers.

In other words? As you navigate this dynamic terrain, the key to unlocking customer loyalty and driving business growth lies in the ability to continuously adapt, innovate, and deliver exceptional experiences at every stage of the consumer decision journey.

Ready to transform your understanding of the consumer decision journey? With Qualtrics® Customer Journey Optimizer , you can take your customers where they want to go—in the fastest and most profitable way.

Elevate your customer journey management today

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Customer journey management 14 min read, customer journey stages 12 min read, buyer's journey 16 min read, customer journey analytics 13 min read, create journey map 24 min read, b2b customer journey 13 min read, request demo.

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When making purchasing decisions, consumers go on a “consumer decision journey” comprised of four stages: consider a selection of brands; evaluate by seeking input from peers, reviewers, and others; buy; and enjoy, advocate, bond. This journey replaces the famous funnel metaphor.

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New Google research: What we now know about 'decoding' consumer decision-making

Jonny Protheroe and Sian Davies have been ‘decoding’ consumer decision-making since 2019. Their latest research reveals where — and how — marketers can experiment and iterate to increase customer confidence and sales in the “messy middle” of the online purchase journey.

The evolution of the internet has changed a lot faster than the way consumers think and make decisions. This means that people's shopping needs keep changing as they try to keep up with the proliferation of choice and cut through the digital noise. In fact, about a third of consumers globally are now spending more time making decisions and considering more brands, stores, and retailers. 1

Google and The Behavioural Architects have been working together for several years now to understand how people decide what to buy while they’re in the messy middle of their purchase journey. Our first report was published in 2020 — and the findings remain hyper-relevant to this day.

But brands want to understand how they can apply these insights into their own campaigns and content. That’s where “Decoding Decisions: Marketing in the messy middle” comes in. 2 The new report builds on earlier findings and is the result of three more years of analysis into the behaviours that shape consumer decision-making.

It reveals how behavioural science principles can be applied in real-world marketing scenarios — at scale. And answers some of the biggest questions we’ve heard since we first began making sense of the messy middle.

How marketers can influence the messy middle

To ensure our research is as helpful and actionable as possible, we’ve focused our findings on three key areas where marketers have the power to experiment and iterate:

• Search: Many people turn to Google Search in their purchase journeys. However, competing against big names with big budgets can be a challenge. Our experiments with Search ads show that smart applications of behavioural science can help even second- and third-ranked brands win a higher proportion of ad clicks.
• Content: Brand websites are a valuable asset in the consumer decision-making process. If shoppers don’t feel confident about a purchase, they won’t click ‘buy’. Our research gives practical guidance on how to boost your website content with behavioural science principles to increase both customer confidence and sales.
• Points of sale: We discovered that shoppers are more willing to switch their preferred choice of retailer than their preferred choice of product brand, particularly where price is a factor. But our findings suggest that even simple applications of behavioural science can have as big an impact on consumer decision-making as offering a 10% discount .

People were foraging for information long before online shopping, and long before there was an internet. And many of the mental processes used by our ancestors persist today. But what we’re looking for and where we’re looking for it can shift in an instant.

That’s why this report explores the information-seeking behaviours marketers need to identify, understand, and address. This allows them to quickly adapt to new and changing demand — and provide consumers with the products and experiences they seek.

Download “Decoding Decisions: Marketing in the messy middle” to learn how you can apply behavioural science principles in real-world marketing scenarios — at scale.

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1 Ipsos Essentials COVID-19 tracker, AU, BR, CA, CN, FR, DE, IN, IT, JP, MX, ZA, KR, ES, U.K., U.S., n=500–1,000 online consumers per market age 18–74 in U.S. and Canada and 16–74 in others, 8. Sept. 2022–11 Sept. 2022. 2 Google/The Behavioural Architects, U.K., Decoding Decisions: Marketing in the messy middle, March 2023.

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A New Customer Decision Journey: Embracing & Fueling the Flywheel

Here's why you must trade your outdated marketing funnels for more inclusive flywheels – and how you can make the most of this new change.

Ever since the introduction of the AIDA model in the late 1800s, marketers have been focused on growing a traditional marketing funnel.

For over 100 years, the AIDA model was considered a marketing cornerstone as it moved consumers through a series of four linear stages in a purchase journey:

In turn, marketers have spent most of their time attracting large amounts of consumers at the top of the funnel, with only a small portion of consumers moving through to a final action, or purchase.

Put simply, within a marketing funnel, the majority of time and energy gets lost on prospects that do not convert.

But what if that energy wasn’t lost?

What if that energy could be redirected back into the purchase journey for real results?

And what if customer energy could be harnessed and added to the equation?

From Funnels to Flywheels

Throughout history, inventors such as James Watt and his steam engine have turned to flywheels for the superior way they store energy.

Now marketers are doing the same.

Marketers are turning to energy-efficient flywheels to leverage data from across the customer decision journey and grow their brands in the digital era.

What makes flywheels superior?

As long as there are no forces working against them, flywheels continue to spin faster and faster, and require less energy to keep going once they start.

In the same way, today’s marketers are leveraging all of the data they have access to in order to:

• Make their marketing more effective (think remarketing).
• Create data-driven touchpoints (including chatbots, digital assistants and other intelligent agents) that help to build momentum and further engage customers to boost revenue and ROI.

And it’s working.

Internal Microsoft Advertising research on creating smarter customer journeys has found that the top performing marketing who leverage data to create more meaningful touchpoints can see up to a 45% incremental lift in ROI/ROAS.

What is causing the flywheel disruption and how can marketers make the most of it?

Here are three factors driving the shift and what you can do to take that insight into your search campaigns today.

1. Customer-Centricity

We are moving from a very product-centric world to a customer-centric world; it’s occurring across all markets and verticals.

In today’s world, simply having customers is not enough. There is a new category of customer in the digital age: the fan.

Today’s businesses need to create brand love that incubates fans that will evangelize their brand.

While funnels produce customers, they don’t address customer health or how customers can help grow your business or drive engagement with future customers.

Happy customers, or brand fans, propel flywheels through word of mouth, customer feedback and repeat purchases.

Unlike linear funnels that end with a sale, flywheels create a self-sustaining virtuous cycle of four stages:

• Attracting strangers.
• Engaging prospects.
• Attaining customers.
• Delighting fans.

The customer is at the heart of the flywheel.

Making It Real for You

Start Documenting Your Customer Journey

First, start documenting your customer journey so you can put your customer at the heart of everything you do. It sounds simple, right?

In our internal research, we found is that 80% of marketers and agencies from our survey are struggling to use AI technologies to better understand their customer decision journey and increase their marketing performance.

As customer decision journeys get more complex – and less linear – it’s essential to use the technologies to better understand and engage your customers.

The 20% of high performers more deeply understand the consumer decision journey and, as a result, can better predict consumer behavior and intent.

Is Your Attribution Model Hurting or Hindering Your Ability to Be Customer-Centric?

Second, ask yourself: Is your attribution model hurting or hindering your ability to be customer-centric and how your programs engage with your customers?

Simplistic attribution models were better suited to the simplicity of channels for marketing and sales in the early 1900s.

However, due to the increasing complexity of customer engagement with devices and channels that have exploded in the last 20 years, marketers need to evolve their attribution model.

The marketing flywheel lends itself to Lifetime Customer Value .

2. Search & Social

The AIDA funnel was a very long-lived and successful marketing tool – but that was before the internet, long before search or social sharing hit the scene.

Search engines and social media have completely changed how we work, shop and live.

Customers used to go directly to a customer service organization for information and assistance with products and services. But this is no longer the case.

Now, customers first go directly to the search engine for answers/content.

If they can’t find what they are looking for on page 1 (maybe page 2 of the search results if you are lucky) they then turn to social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

After that, if they can’t get an answer they may try to go the route of contacting a customer service department.

Customers are more empowered than ever before and play an important role as trusted sources of information. But that doesn’t mean that brands and companies are off the hook.

It means that now more than ever you need to take back your truth and make sure that you have the answers to the questions that strangers, prospects, and even your customers are asking.

Don’t let a Munion speak half-truths on your behalf.

Making It Real

Make sure your customers can find what they are looking for right away.

Do your research to understand what your customers are asking (not just what you think they are asking) and take back and own the conversation.

3. Data & AI

Data is the renewable energy of the next century. This new world order makes it essential for companies to optimize their customer experience (CX) for the right engagement channels including:

• Social media.
• Digital assistants.

Data-driven touchpoints are the key to the modern CX as they spin your flywheel and grow your business. These touchpoints have two goals:

• To delight customers.
• To gather more data to help personalize future touchpoints.

They are also how you apply force to your flywheel as you leverage AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) to continuously optimize the experience.

Own and unlock your data! From our internal research, the top performing marketers are using ML to make AI systems smarter with every interaction.

Unlocking your data at scale is key for creating personalized and interactive brand experiences that are infused with cognitive services and AI technologies such as chatbots, voice skills, and digital assistants.

They’re applying ML to anticipate behaviors and consumer actions to attract, engage, attain, and delight customers. They’re creating smarter, more tailored experiences at key points along the customer decision journey.

What’s the benefit of unlocking your data?

The top performers with an excellent data and AI strategy and are seeing amazing results – 45% incremental lift in ROI/ROAS.

Making It Actionable

Own your data to create audience segments – and use those audiences segments in your paid search accounts to move customers along their journey.

Customize your ad copy and landing pages based on the audience segments you’ve identified from your data and insights into the customer journey.

Reduce Friction

After creating a flywheel, the next big question becomes how to reduce friction.

Friction kills flywheels, and companies can often work against themselves.

Essentially, companies should rethink anything that prevents them from focusing on the customer.

Look at both your organic search and your paid search data to identify friction points.

The friction points in paid search may be identified with a poor quality score – this means that your keywords, ad copy, and landing pages aren’t necessarily aligned. There is a mismatch in the message and the content.

The New Customer Decision Journey

The customer journey is undergoing exponential change as new technologies shift power to the customer.

Modern customers share.

They inform.

They review.

They ‘like.’

Marketers must adapt to stay relevant and trade their outdated funnels for more inclusive flywheels. When done right, flywheels can quickly transform strangers into brand fans.

The speed increases as you grow and focus on adding force (the programs and channels you use to drive it) and energy (the touchpoints and data that’s fueling it).

And unlike the funnel which ends with a sale, a happy customer marks just the beginning.

More Resources:

• The Marketing Funnel Isn’t Dead, We Just Understand It Better
• When Optimizing Your PPC Campaigns Strangles The Funnel
• 12 New Realities of Inbound Marketing

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Featured & In-Post Images: Microsoft Advertising

Christi is the Head of Evangelism for Bing at Microsoft and is a member of the board of SEMPO. For ...

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The Consumer Decision Journey: The New Marketing Funnel

Published by BMT Micro on July 22, 2016 July 22, 2016

Traditionally, the consumer decision journey has always been depicted as a funnel. The funnel served as the primary model for how a prospective customer moves from initial brand awareness to purchase. But, the funnel concept was created long before social media, blogging, or digital content marketing ever existed, so is it still relevant today?

In the past, brands were taught to push marketing toward consumers at each stage of the process to influence their behavior. These consumers formed brand impressions from touchpoints such as advertisements, word of mouth, and product experiences. This is still true today, but consumers rarely take such a linear journey. They are moving outside the funnel by changing the way they research and buy products.

Today’s consumers move through a set of touchpoints before, during, and after a purchase. They are no longer evaluating or making purchases by how much marketing messages are able to sway them. It’s a much more complicated conversation because they are actively seeking out information on their own. While the funnel approach may have been successful in the past, it cannot adapt to today’s changing consumer expectations. It fails to capture all the touch points and key buying factors. The approach also has very little regard for the post-purchase experience.

As a result, McKinsey & Company (a worldwide management consulting firm) established the new decision-making journey. The new decision journey is much more complex than a linear funnel, with multiple inlets of information. The approach explains the decision-making process as a loop within a loop, with one initial purchase decision journey that feeds into a loyalty cycle after purchase.

The main difference between the traditional funnel and the decision journey is the emphasis placed on building and maintaining relationships with consumers. It’s not about shaping a consumer’s journey through messaging that is only relevant because it pertains to a predetermined stage like the traditional funnel suggest. It’s about being able to identify where a consumer is in the decision journey and provide the most relevant messaging for that given moment. This new approach also accounts for experiences consumers have with brands that affect their long-term loyalty after the initial purchase.

 Each touch point a brand has with a consumer needs to deliver a clear, consistent message. It’s also an opportunity for brands to be in the right place at the right time with the right message. By understanding the decision journey, brands stand much greater chance of reaching consumers at moments of maximum influence.

MoraJuicy · June 20, 2018 at 11:15 pm

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The Consumer Decision Journey Explained

November 17, 2023

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Understanding the consumer decision process is essential for effective marking, and those with an advanced education in applied psychology can better understand the motivations behind individual spending decisions, as well as consumer behavior on a larger scale.

What Exactly Is the Consumer Decision Journey?

The consumer decision journey is a behavior-driven framework that allows marketing professionals to assess how consumers decide to buy certain goods and services. It also helps marketing professionals strategize about how to influence these decisions. It is a template for building targeted marketing strategies. Factors considered in these strategies include target demographic, medium used, online presence and societal trends.

Why Understanding the Consumer Decision Journey Is So Important

Decades ago, businesses could seamlessly guide consumers through the sales funnel since most potential buyers had similar information and followed identical steps as they made purchasing decisions. But today’s consumer decision journey is more fluid and can be very different for different target audiences. Businesses must take steps to understand their customers’ different paths.

These days, consumers are bombarded with information about products and services, and it is easy for them to sift through it on their own. They no longer have to rely on in-person retail businesses for education or information. Instead, they can proactively research potential purchases, read testimonials, get to know brands and comparison shop online. This has led to more informed consumers, requiring marketers to build strategies that acknowledge this new reality.

Marketers need to use information derived from each of the consumer’s touch points with the product or brand to build proactive strategies that not only meet consumers where they are but also anticipate where they may be going. To do this, businesses must understand the psychology of the consumer decision journey and determine how they can influence its trajectory.

How to Map the Consumer Decision Journey

When McKinsey & Co. launched their road map for the consumer decision journey, they suggested a six-stage journey that began with consideration and evaluation. They have since transitioned to a shorter loop model built on the following stages:

• Buying : the process of the consumer buying the product or service
• Experiencing : how the consumer feels about the product or service after purchasing it
• Advocating : the consumer proactively spreads the word about the product or service
• Bonding : the customer develops brand loyalty

The final stage, bonding, creates a loop that brings the consumer back to the journey’s starting point. This loop provides marketers with a template for developing key consumer marketing strategies.

The decision journey is a process personal to each consumer. Businesses should use internal data to map out their customers’ unique paths. Some customers may even skip steps depending on their needs or their research.

Similarly, businesses are likely to find that customers tend to get caught up at similar points along the journey. Marketers who can identify these bottlenecks can much more effectively guide customers past the pain points and through the remainder of the journey. In some cases, website analytics can shed valuable light on when and where businesses tend to lose customers.

Businesses should also strive to determine the typical length of their customer decision journey, since it can vary greatly depending on the product or service. For many customers, the initial consideration stage includes an extended shopping phase. During this phase, customers read online reviews, use search engines to learn more about a brand or a product, visit stores to see products in person and look for deals.

When mapping their customer decision journey, businesses may also find it useful to take their research a step beyond normal practices. For instance, businesses that build their consumer decision journey around the values of their targeted consumers may develop new pathways on their consumer decision journey. Marketers should also consider looking at their competitors’ purchase paths to determine key places to intervene.

How Psychology Factors Into Consumer Decision Journey Mapping

Once they have mapped out their typical customer decision journey, marketers can begin targeting customers proactively. To guide the journey effectively, however, an in-depth understanding of consumer psychology and how it relates to purchasing decisions is key.

Marketers who understand the psychology of purchasing and consumer behavior can create campaigns that forge connections with potential customers. In this way, they can guide the customer along their decision journey while adding even more value to the customer’s experience. Ultimately, this may result in more satisfied customers who become loyal brand advocates.

While marketers have had to take manual actions to guide customers in the past, today, they can take full advantage of the digital tools at their disposal. Automated marketing tools enable professionals to streamline each step of the process, while proactive personalization gives them the power to alter their messages based on what they know about each customer. Contextual interaction allows marketers to change their behaviors depending on where customers are in the buying journey, while journey innovation gives them the power to A/B test continually.

Psychological Tools for Mapping the Customer Journey

It’s important to acknowledge psychology’s role in mapping the customer journey. For companies looking to forge deeper connections with consumers, it’s imperative to know how to optimize the application of psychological principles. To do this, companies can deploy specific tools whose purpose is to create efficient pathways for these intricate connections.

Customer Journey Maps

Raw data analysis typically yields “what” data. This type of information relates to concrete surface data quantified by predetermined metrics like a customer’s age, how long they stay on a web page, or how much money they spend at a specific location. A customer journey map goes beyond this surface by using psychology to help determine the “why” of the customer decision journey data that may ultimately drive interest in a product or a service.

Answering these questions can be difficult because the impetus of consumer behavior is primarily within their subconscious. While digging into the subconscious of each individual is not feasible, customer journey maps can help build a psychological profile of customers. This can help businesses extract educated guesses on what may psychologically motivate consumer behavior.

These tools can use data that slots consumers within a psychological archetype, which is then combined with “what” data to construct a more holistic consumer profile. This combination can help mitigate the potential for assumption and risk, which could help create more targeted campaigns that acknowledge current needs while anticipating future needs.

Empathy Maps

An empathy map doesn’t try to glean insights from an individual’s subconscious level. However, it does inform purchasing by using psychology to build understanding from the customer’s perspective. This typically requires the company to ask specific questions that may drive consumer decisions. These questions could cover topics such as:

• What the consumer may feel when they use the product
• What the consumer may see when using their product
• What the consumer may be doing while using the product
• What benefits the consumer may receive by using the product

Using psychology to see a product or service through the eyes of the consumer can further shift focus to consumer interests, which could allow them to develop more intuitive campaign strategies. It could also help them uncover potential vulnerabilities or weaknesses in their product or campaign. This can ultimately lead to improvements that can garner deeper consumer connections.

Become an Invaluable Part of a Company’s Growth

Psychology plays a vital role in both mapping and guiding the consumer decision journey. Understanding important psychology concepts can help marketers become more effective at targeting their audiences and communicating the right things about their products. Professionals skilled in applying these concepts can help a company optimize its marketing strategies.

The USC online Master of Science in Applied Psychology can help marketing professionals better understand and capitalize on the psychology behind consumer behavior. Earning this degree can help marketers shape campaigns that successfully leverage psychology on the path to purchase. Learn how our program can help prepare professionals to become game changers in business.

Recommended Readings

How Does Consumer Psychology Influence User Experience?

Psychology Behind Developing Brand Loyalty

What Is Consumer Psychology?

Accenture, “What Is an Empathy Map?”

Business Insider , “Ethical Consumerism: Spending Money on Your Values”

Customer Experience Magazine , “Keeping Experience in Mind: The Neuropsychology Behind Customer Journey Maps”

Deloitte, “The Modern Consumer Decision Making Journey”

G2, Best Marketing Automation Software

LinkedIn, “What Is a Customer Journey Map and Why Are They Important?”

McKinsey & Company, “The Consumer Decision Journey”

McKinsey & Company, “The New Consumer Decision Journey”

McKinsey & Company, “Understanding and Shaping Consumer Behavior in the Next Normal”

TechTarget, “7 Benefits of a Personalized Marketing Content Strategy”

Learn More About Our MAPP Program.

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The rise of the inclusive consumer

The American consumer is undeniably becoming more inclusive. Responding to our survey 1 McKinsey Inclusive Consumer Survey, October 2021. in October 2021, two out of three Americans told us their social values now shape their shopping choices. And 45 percent—likely representing well over a hundred million shoppers 2 Extrapolated data: 45 percent of 270 million US residents over 18 years old would be about 120 million. —believe retailers should actively support Black-owned businesses and brands. This 45 percent represents the inclusive consumer.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Pamela Brown, Tiffany Burns , Tyler Harris, Charlotte Lucas, and Israe Zizaoui, representing views from McKinsey’s Retail Practice.

Large consumer and retail players from Nordstrom to Yelp are moving quickly to serve this group of influential customers. Indeed, while inclusive consumers tend to be younger, female, and more racially diverse, they include men and women across ethnic backgrounds, income levels, and age groups. Given this diverse and ubiquitous representation, the inclusive consumer holds the unique power to influence all demographic groups (Exhibit 1).

The inclusive consumer is more likely than other shoppers to buy Black-owned brands out of a desire to support diverse entrepreneurs on their growth journeys and small businesses in general (Exhibit 2). Like many other consumers today, they base their shopping choices less on traditional advertising and more on social media, friends’ recommendations, and the stories of those who founded the brands they admire. They are also more likely than other shoppers to care about sustainability and quality. 3 McKinsey Inclusive Consumer Survey, October 2021.

Where the inclusive consumer may be headed

Inclusive consumers are a large and influential population, and they want to spend more on Black-owned brands, which they know are underrepresented on store shelves. However, finding the brands and the products remains a barrier. Indeed, one in five inclusive consumers cited not finding the products they wanted as a reason for not buying from Black-owned brands. This plays out in the bigger picture of US retail spending as well. While about 14 percent of the US population identifies as Black, 4 “Quick facts,” United States Census Bureau, July 1, 2019. Black-owned brands rang up only about $83 billion in sales in 2020 5 Estimated with consumer-reported proportion of holiday shopping with Black-owned brands and National Retail Federation data on 2020 holiday spending of $790 billion. —less than 1.5 percent of $5.4 trillion 6 “Sales for U.S. retail trade sector over $5,411.0 billion,” United States Census Bureau, January 28, 2021. of retail spending. In our survey, about 21 percent of inclusive consumers said they had pledged to devote at least 15 percent of their retail spending to Black-owned brands in an effort to turn the tides. 7 McKinsey Inclusive Consumer Survey, October 2021.

Most retailers will need to make changes to meet the needs of inclusive consumers. Fewer than half of these shoppers say they know which products on retail shelves are from Black-owned brands, and a third don’t know where to go to purchase Black-owned brands. 8 McKinsey Inclusive Consumer Survey, October 2021. About 45 percent of the inclusive consumers we surveyed said they would value relevant labeling on store shelves and the ability to filter website results to find Black-owned brands. About a third would value additional sources of information, such as curated lists of products, a database of Black-owned brands, and recommendations from influencers.

Major retailers are now joining social influencers and other stakeholders to spread the word. Growing support for Black-owned brands is evident in social media and traditional media: a wide range of publications, from New York magazine and GQ to Harper’s Bazaar 9 “The 42 best gifts to shop from Black-owned businesses now and forever,” Harper’s Bazaar , November 17, 2021. and whowhatwear.com, published a curated holiday list of products from Black-owned brands in November 2021. In the same month, Oprah’s “favorite things” list 10 “Oprah’s favorite things 2021 list is here!,” Oprah Daily, November 23, 2021. focused on products from small businesses, many of which are owned by women and people of color.

How retailers could attract the inclusive consumer

In a marketplace being transformed by digitization, social change, and a global pandemic, leading retailers and brand managers know that they must keep meeting evolving consumer preferences to stay relevant. Major retailers are now reviewing how they work—from operations and merchandising to hiring and HR practices—and starting to move the needle. Retailers should consider actions in five main areas to bring the inclusive consumer through their doors and onto their websites.

Action 1: Reshape shelves. Retailers can first and foremost demonstrate a commitment to the inclusive consumer by evaluating and reimagining the brands on their shelves. Many are already taking strong action, reimagining their merchandising mix to make shelves and the brands that sit on them more representative. For example, more than 28 national retailers, including Gap, Macy’s, and Sephora, have signed the Fifteen Percent Pledge’s call for 15 percent of retail shelf space to be dedicated to Black-owned brands. Some of these retailers have doubled their assortments of Black-owned brands in just a year, opening their doors to almost 400 brands. 11 Elizabeth Segran, “In one year, the 15% Pledge got 385 Black-owned brands on the shelves of Macy’s, Gap, Sephora, and more,” Fast Company , July 7, 2021. In addition to introducing Black-owned brands, retailers could also review their planograms and product placement: for example, Ulta Beauty is intentional about placing Black-owned brands in prime locations in stores and creates dedicated efforts to increase Black-owned brands’ features in circular advertising and email marketing. 12 Liz Flora, “Camille Rose expands to Ulta Beauty as retailer makes Black-owned brand push,” Glossy, April 12, 2021.

Retailers can first and foremost demonstrate a commitment to the inclusive consumer by evaluating and reimagining the brands on their shelves.

Action 2: Switch up sourcing. Retailers, especially those who are vertically integrated, could also demonstrate commitment to the inclusive consumer by doubling down on diversity in their supply chain. For example, Best Buy has committed to spending at least $1.2 billion with businesses owned by members of the Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) community and other diverse businesses by 2025. 13 “Best Buy commits to spending $1.2 billion with BIPOC and diverse businesses by 2025,” Business Wire, June 24, 2021. The commitment includes plans to increase all forms of spending with businesses from nearly every corner of the company—from how it brings goods and services to stores to where and how it advertises. Supplier diversity is not limited to retailers and can also be considered broadly by most brands and companies. For example, in 2020, the Coca-Cola Company committed to spending an additional $500 million over five years with Black-owned suppliers, more than doubling the company’s previous commitment. 14 “Coca-Cola Company commits $500 million in additional spending with Black-owned suppliers,” Coca-Cola Company, October 10, 2020. These actions show an increasing commitment to diversity across the supply chain, and these types of commitments will likely grow in future years as consumers begin calling for similar levels of diversity in the supply chain as they are calling for on shelves.

Action 3: Map it out. Inclusive consumers consistently say that not knowing which brands are Black-owned or where to shop for them are barriers to spending as much as they would like on brands from diverse founders. And wayfinding is their resounding answer. Retailers could help consumers identify Black-owned brands with clear labeling on shelves and websites, the ability to filter website search results, and curated lists of products, for example.

Sephora responded to these needs by creating a dedicated tab on its website to share Black-owned brands’ stories and products and by enhancing its online site, which features Black-owned brands on its browsing pane, provides a filter for shoppers looking for Black- and BIPOC-owned brands, and provides curated lists of recommended products, including a “Sephora Favorites” bundle in Black-owned beauty. 15 Kori Hale, “Sephora’s planning to double down on Black-owned brands,” Forbes , January 25, 2021. Google is also actively working on multiple initiatives to support Black-owned brands, including a tool that allows Black-owned businesses to identify themselves in maps, listings, and Google business-profile searches. 16 Keyword , “Standing with the Black community,” blog entry by Sundar Pichai, Google, June 3, 2020; “Supporting Black-owned businesses,” Google for Small Business, 2021. Additionally, Google has launched the ByBlack platform, which consists of both a national Black business directory (powered by the US Black Chambers) and a national certification as a Black-owned business (in partnership with American Express). This tool provides Black entrepreneurs access to a community with valuable business resources (including Google trainings) and a way to help reach new customers.

Action 4: Share the stories. Inclusive consumers care about what is on shelves, but they want more. They want to learn about founders’ stories, for example, and support the missions of small businesses. Further, our research shows that inclusive consumers are more likely than other shoppers to buy Black-owned brands based on recommendations from friends, and retailers that incorporate founder stories into marketing and digital placements are more likely than those that don’t to attract the inclusive consumer’s eye. Nordstrom, for example, introduced “Concept 012: Black_Space,” which includes a dedicated shop developed, designed, and curated by Black voices to amplify Black representation through in-store buildouts and merchandising. The concept is further supported with an online site experience that includes video content created by Black curators to represent their perspectives. 17 “New Concepts @Nordstrom launches Concept 012: Black_Space,” Nordstrom, February 22, 2021.

Action 5: Ditch the big-brand playbook. Introducing and cultivating smaller brands takes different capabilities and mindsets  than retailers may be accustomed to when working with larger, more established brands. Unlike big brands, small brands come with more variability in experience and know-how, as well as growing pains as they enter the bigger retail stage. Retailers that are committed to fostering smaller brands will need to work differently, creating teams that understand how these brands operate. For example, those with experience working with small brands know that everyday requirements from retailers, such as buy sizes and inventory systems, can have large-scale repercussions on small brands with limited working capital or team capacity to meet these terms. A retailer that seeks to help smaller brands can boost the odds of success by adapting its playbook and its teams to suit their needs.

The time is now

In the years ahead, millions more consumers will likely join the ranks of inclusive consumers, rewarding businesses that pursue inclusion and avoiding those that don’t.

Businesses that meet the needs of inclusive consumers will likely do more than raise revenues and loyalty—they may also earn dividends in other areas of the business, including attracting and retaining talent. About 70 percent of the US-based employees we surveyed in August 2020 said their sense of purpose is largely defined by work, and nearly two-thirds said COVID-19 had caused them to reflect on their purpose in life, and nearly half were reconsidering the kind of work they do. (For more on this topic, please see Naina Dhingra, Andrew Samo, Bill Schaninger, and Matt Schrimper “ Help your employees find purpose—or watch them leave .”)

Whether employees or customers, the inclusive consumer is changing the imperative for retail. The evidence is overwhelming: the inclusive consumer is leading the pack, influencing consumers across demographics, and voting with their pocketbooks for retailers that support diverse entrepreneurs and their products. (For more on this topic, please see “ The Black unicorn: Changing the game for inclusivity in retail .”)

Pamela Brown is a partner in McKinsey’s New Jersey office, where Charlotte Lucas and Israe Zizaoui are consultants; Tiffany Burns is a partner in the Atlanta office; and Tyler Harris is an associate partner in the Washington, DC, office.

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