Knowing what drives your customers is the foundation of a successful strategy
Understanding your customer is the cornerstone of marketing. Yet many businesses, even those with substantial marketing budgets, fail to apply this principle effectively. The result can be misaligned strategies, wasted resources, and missed opportunities to connect with the right audience.
At the heart of effective marketing lies one essential question: Who is your customer? Beyond that, it’s crucial to delve into what these customers care about, why they make the choices they do, and how you can align your offerings with their motivations and expectations. Successful brands don’t just identify their target customers; they work hard to understand how these customers think and feel.
Peter Drucker, one of the most influential thinkers in business and marketing, highlighted the enduring truth that “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits them and sells itself.”1
In other words, understanding your customer isn’t just about selling, it’s about aligning your entire business with the needs and desires of the people you serve.
What is a customer?
A customer is often reduced to a set of data points: age, income, location, and gender. But this narrow view misses the complexity of human decision-making. A customer is not merely a statistic or a sales figure; they are individuals with needs, desires, frustrations, and priorities.
At the simplest level, a customer is:
- A person with a problem or desire – They may be looking to satisfy hunger, improve health, enhance convenience, enjoy an indulgence, or express personal values.
- A person open to solutions – Customers look for products or services that meet their specific needs, but have numerous options in a competitive marketplace.
- A person with choices – Customers’ motivations and priorities are fluid, shifting based on context and time. What matters to them today may not be what matters to them tomorrow.
Understanding this means recognising that customers’ decisions are rarely purely rational. Emotional, psychological, and social factors significantly influence behaviour, often more than price or product features. As Mark Ritson, a leading British marketing professor, puts it: “Understanding the utter lack of importance a brand plays in the life of its customers is the beginning of better brand management.”2
Customers have busy lives and competing priorities; your brand is not at the centre of their world. Successful marketers grasp this and adjust their strategies accordingly.
Why understanding your customer matters
Without customer insight, businesses often fall into common traps:
- Attempting to appeal to everyone, resulting in resonating with no one.
- Focusing on product features instead of customer benefits.
- Communicating through ineffective channels or at inappropriate times.
- Offering solutions to non-existent problems.
- Misjudging the emotional or psychological motivations behind purchases.
Understanding your customer allows you to shape your entire business more effectively, not just your promotional strategy. It informs all other aspects of marketing, too, including product development, pricing, customer service, and distribution. Just as importantly, it helps build customer loyalty and trust by aligning your brand with the values and needs of your audience.
A note about customer loyalty: it’s valuable, but it’s not everything! It’s not that you need more loyalty from your customers, it’s much more that you need more customers who can become loyal! In other words, understand your ideal customers and set out to attract more of them.
Byron Sharp argues that brands often focus too much on customer loyalty when growth actually comes from attracting new customers. Sharp advocates for building mental and physical availability, ensuring your brand is easy to think of and easy to buy.3
How customer motivations drive behaviour
At the core of customer understanding are motivations. Why do customers choose one product over another? Why do they repeatedly buy from certain brands? Why do they often hesitate to switch to new offerings?
Philip Kotler, often thought of as the father of modern marketing, put it simply: “Marketing is not about the product; it’s about the customer.”4 People make decisions based on a complex blend of rational and emotional factors. To succeed, marketers need to understand the specific motivations driving their audience.
1. Functional needs
Customers seek products and services that solve practical problems or satisfy specific needs. In the plant-based space, this might mean looking for healthy options for growing children or convenient meal solutions for busy lifestyles.
2. Emotional drivers
Functionality is important, but emotional needs often outweigh functional ones. Customers are more likely to buy and remain loyal when a product satisfies emotional or psychological needs like belonging, comfort, status, or pleasure. For example, plant-based customers may feel reassured by sustainability messaging or inspired by the brand’s ethical stance.
3. Social and identity-based motivations
Customers make decisions based on self-perception and how they wish to be perceived by others. Branding plays a significant role here, as products can align with a person’s identity, values, or social status. A customer choosing a plant-based product may do so to align with their environmental values or with their self-perception of being health-conscious.
4. Habit and inertia
Many purchases are habitual rather than the result of active decision-making. Once trust in a product or brand is established, customers are likely to stick with it unless a compelling reason prompts a change.
Segmentation – recognising customer diversity
Importantly, understanding your consumer means acknowledging that not all are alike. A key mistake businesses make is trying to appeal to everyone with a single message or product. Successful marketing starts with segmentation — dividing your potential customer base into distinct groups based on shared characteristics and behaviours.
Types of segmentation
- Demographic – Grouping customers based on measurable traits like age, income, gender, or location.
- Behavioural – Grouping consumers based on their interactions with products, such as purchase frequency or brand loyalty.
- Psychographic – Grouping customers based on personality, values, interests, and lifestyle.
In the plant-based space, segmentation might be said to be particularly important. The market consists of a wide range of consumer profiles, including but not limited to:
- Committed vegans – Often motivated by a combination of ethical, environmental, and health reasons.
- Flexitarians – People who regularly include plant-based options in their diet but still consume animal products.
- Health-conscious buyers – Drawn to plant-based foods for perceived health benefits.
- Environmentally motivated consumers – Seek to reduce their environmental impact through diet.
- Taste-first customers – Will only consume plant-based options if they match or exceed the flavour and texture of animal-based alternatives.
Understanding these distinctions allows brands to craft targeted messages and product offerings. A health-conscious flexitarian will respond to different messaging than a committed vegan. Byron Sharp’s research reinforces the importance of mass market appeal, but within that, segmentation ensures that messages and product benefits resonate with the right audience.
How to understand your customer without breaking the bank
You don’t need a big budget to understand your customer. Effective research can be done using simple methods:
- Customer surveys – Online platforms like SurveyMonkey or Typeform allow for quick feedback.
- Social media listening – Monitor how consumers talk about your brand and competitors online.
- Customer interviews – A small sample of in-depth conversations can uncover valuable insights.
- Sales data analysis – Patterns in purchasing behaviour can reveal customer motivations.
- Competitor analysis – Understanding how competitors attract and retain customers can provide useful insights.
Mark Ritson advises companies to focus on uncovering insight rather than drowning in data. Many brands collect huge amounts of consumer data but fail to translate it into meaningful understanding. Effective research means asking the right questions and looking for the underlying drivers of behaviour, not just surface-level patterns.
Conclusion – why it matters so much
Understanding your customer is not just a marketing exercise, it’s a business strategy. Philip Kotler’s observation that ‘marketing is about the customer’4 remains as true today as ever. Byron Sharp’s work reminds us that brand growth comes from increasing reach and availability (reaching more customers), not just customer loyalty. Mark Ritson’s perspective adds that brands must comprehend themselves from the consumer’s point of view, recognising that customers have complex lives and competing priorities.
Successful businesses don’t just know their customers, they understand them. They build products and strategies around consumer motivations, target the right segments, and make their brands easy to buy. In short, understanding your customer isn’t a tactical choice; it’s the foundation of business success.
Catch up on the first article in the series here. For more support on your alternative protein strategy, get in touch with our experts at [email protected] and subscribe to our podcast and newsletter.
Simon Middleton
Senior Writer
References
- Drucker, P. Quoted in The Highs of Effective Marketing, Drucker Institute, Claremont Graduate University, 2014. Available at: https://drucker.institute/thedx/the-highs-of-marketing/
- Ritson, M. Look at your brand from the customer’s perspective, not the other way round. Marketing Week, September 2022. Available at: https://www.marketingweek.com/ritson-brand-customer-perspective/
- Sharp, B. 2010. How Brands Grow. Oxford University Press.
- Kotler, P. 2008, Principles of Marketing. Pearson, 2008.
