Analyzing Consumer Insights

Have you ever looked at a well-designed dashboard or data viz, and tried to explain EXACTLY what makes it so effective? It's trickier than you might think. There are the obvious things like colors, layouts, imagery and chart types, but those only tell part of the story. Ultimately what matters most is PERCEPTION. Building a dashboard is equal parts psychology and design, and requires an understanding of how humans process and interpret information. The difference between an average dashboard and a great one can be tough to pinpoint, but it often comes down to things like: 👉 Enclosure 👉 Similarity 👉 Continuity 👉 Closure 👉 Connection 👉 Proximity 👉 Symmetry These are known as Gestalt Principles, which describe how we group visual elements, recognize patterns, and simplify complex information. While they are traditionally used by graphic artists and UX designers, these principles are INCREDIBLY powerful tools for data visualization as well. Do you use Gestalt Principles for data viz? Let me know in the comments! #datavisualization #gestalt #dashboarddesign #businessintelligence #data #careers

How is your team localizing in-store audience strategies? 🏪 Not all store visits are the same, and localized trip missions vary by region, store format, and shopper demographics. A convenience store in Manhattan serves a different mission than a suburban Sam’s Club. Understanding these distinctions is critical. 🎯 To build an effective in-store audience strategy, we need to align messaging, media, and promotions with two key dimensions: 1️⃣ Why is the shopper here? Each store visit serves a unique purpose based on geography, shopping habits, and store format: 🛒 Stock-Up Trip (Bulk Buy) – Larger baskets, typically planned for weekly or monthly needs. Common in warehouse clubs and large-format stores. 🛍️ Fill-In Trip – Smaller, more frequent visits for fresh or missing essentials. Typical in urban grocery and neighborhood markets. ⚡ Urgent Need (Immediate Consumption) – A grab-and-go mission for an essential (e.g., medicine, baby care, dinner ingredients). Key for convenience stores and pharmacies. ☀️ Daily Shopping (Habitual Trip) – Regular visits, often in dense urban areas, where fresh food and quick-stop items are a priority. 2️⃣ How do shoppers make decisions? Beyond trip type, decision-making mode varies based on location, occasion, and shopper intent: 📅 Pre-Planned Purchases – Shoppers know what they need before they walk in. Personalized app-based reminders, aisle signage, and digital coupons for planned replenishment items. 🛍️ Impulse Purchases – Shoppers are open to discovering something new. Localized product recommendations, in-store sampling, and digital shelf-edge media. 🎯 Focused vs. Browsing Behavior – Some shoppers are on a mission, while others explore. 💡 Time-sensitive shoppers need efficient checkout options and wayfinding tools, while browsers respond to interactive displays, storytelling, and product bundling. 🏪 Retailers who integrate purchase history, mobile app engagement, and real-time in-store behavior can create hyper-localized retail media experiences that feel intuitive and tailored to the moment. The result? More relevant messaging, increased basket sizes, and higher shopper engagement.

3 consumer trends I saw this week that show Gen Z and alpha consume very differently from us. I’ve seen four generations of consumers in my own house - My dadi, my parents, Trisha and I, and now my daughter. There were minor evolutions in consumption as we went down the generations. But, now the playbook seems to have shifted completely. Here are 3 examples from founder conversations this week: 1. Dinner sets are dead. It’s about sets of 2/3 My grandfather had a 24-piece porcelain set. White, gold rimmed, never used. Only brought out when “important guests” came over. That was what buying for an occasion looked like. Seeing a young couple spending ₹10,000 on two mugs from Good Earth for their morning coffee ritual isn’t uncommon today. A founder in the dinnerware space told me it’s experiential now. Customers want a different bowl for ramen, a different plate for sushi, a proper thali for Indian food, and an entire shelf just for mugs. Even if it’s just for personal consumption and in sets of 2. India’s homeware market is set to double by 2032. And over 60% of young buyers start their journey on Instagram and Pinterest. So, the playbook has turned. 2. Perfume ≠ One Bottle Anymore In college, I had one perfume that lasted two semesters. A "signature scent" was for my personality. Now? Gen Z rotates 4 to 6 fragrances. One for work. One for the gym. One for date night. One just for the vibe. And, they ‘layer’. Fragrance has gone from utility to emotion. It's your mood. It’s self care. (Yes, I’ve written about this before. Link in comments.) 3. Fitness is the New Friday Night For me as a young adult, weekends meant parties and fancy meals. Now I get texts like: “Bro, paddling tomorrow?” “Saturday run at 7am?” I see more Padel tournaments, 10Ks, and gym stories than party reels. And honestly? I love it. Everyone is talking about their trainer, diet or fitness regime. The new social flex is now your marathon personal best or knowing what ‘Hyrox’ means 🤣 . The new generations aren’t just spending more. They’re spending with emotion, ritual, and aesthetics. And, they’re spending differently. If you're still selling the way you did 5 years ago, you're selling to a past that’s not coming back. Do you agree? Have you seen the same story? #India #consumer #genZ #d2c

🚩 How To Flag Misleading and Dishonest Charts (https://lnkd.in/e9cB8r4E), a practical guide on how to spot misleading charts to communicate insights more accurately and more reliably — with plenty of examples and design guidelines to create honest charts. Kindly put together by Nathan Yau. 🚫 Charts aren’t merely a visual representation of data. ✅ Charts are visuals that have a specific job to do. ✅ Don’t cut bar chart baselines — always start at 0. ✅ Don’t expand the y-axis beyond the max value. ✅ Don’t choose narrow segments to highlight a point. 🤔 Beware of smooth operator as it often hides real data. 🚫 Correlation doesn’t mean causation: validate and verify. ✅ Don’t add time gaps in the timeline: it hides what happened. ✅ Avoid leading titles, as people use them to interpret data. We often think of charts as visual representation of data. But as Nick Desbarats says, charts are visuals that have a job to do — e.g. make people aware, take an action, find an answer, filter or look up values. To do that job well, they need to be honest. And if they don’t, they spread skewed and biased messages, fast. Charts combine visual encodings (e.g. color, area, position, direction, length, angle) with scales. If the data is scarce, visual encodings fill a space based on available data — against the scales we choose to use for it. If the scales are chosen unfairly, or the data is cherry-picked, charts tell a wrong story. Here are some of the common attributes of dishonest charts: 🎢 Slopes → Artificial steepness of lines suggests notable changes. 🚢 Damper → Values appear smaller if y-axis expands beyond max. 🍒 Cherrypicker → Choosing narrow segments to highlight a point. 🌊 Smooth operator → Avgs show patterns, but hide bumps in reality. 🗑️ Overbinner → Clumping data into general groups to hide diversity. 👀 Base Stealer → Shortened y-axis makes tiny differences seem large. 🦋 Probable Cause → Showing 2 things follow similar/opposing patterns. ⏰ Time Gap → Points in time are purposely selected, others left out. 🔥 Storyteller → Leads with narratives, then squeezes data to support. 📇 Descriptor → Words chosen to deflect or invite misinterpretations. Different design choices lead to different charts, along with different interpretations attached to them. And that interpretation is often linked to what a reader already knows, what they expect, or what they choose to believe. The purpose of a good chart is to make wrong interpretations less likely. Unfortunately, there are plenty of charts that intentionally invite wrong interpretations. So be careful in choosing the data set to rely on, check sources, and explore not only what is there, but also what is missing. As Nathan suggests, a single data set can represent infinite narratives, depending on the angle you look from. So be cautious about the story you are telling, and avoid common but dishonest attributes that always invite wrong conclusions. #ux #design

Quick challenge: Say the color of each word aloud as quickly as possible. Surprisingly difficult, isn't it? That’s because you’re not reading the words themselves. You’re identifying the color they're printed in first, then reading the words. That's the Stroop Effect. Your brain handles text and visuals through two distinct pathways — one for words and another for colors. Typically, these systems collaborate. But when they conflict, it slows down processing. Consider the implications for data visualization: • When text and visuals are misaligned, your audience experiences the same kind of mental conflict as in the Stroop test. • When labels contradict the data, comprehension is hindered. • When a legend requires viewers to interpret colors separately, insights become tougher to grasp. The most effective data visualizations ensure that visual and textual elements are synchronized. • Titles should clearly convey to the audience what they're viewing. • Labels should be integrated directly into the visualization to avoid forcing viewers to switch focus. • Visual contrast should enhance the message, not compete with it. When text and visuals work in unison, insights become instinctive. When they don't, understanding is delayed. Are your charts making understanding easy or difficult? Art+Science Analytics Institute | University of Notre Dame | University of Notre Dame - Mendoza College of Business | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | University of Chicago | D'Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University | ELVTR | Grow with Google - Data Analytics #Analytics #DataStorytelling

Millennials made luxury cool. Gen Z is making it accountable. New research from The Business of Fashion shows younger consumers are questioning everything: "Should I really spend a thousand dollars on a Louis Vuitton bag when it's canvas, not leather?" They're researching materials, shopping vintage first, and demanding transparency that most luxury brands simply aren't prepared to give. While millennials fueled the last luxury boom through streetwear drops and scarcity marketing, Gen Z wants substance over hype. They're walking into stores expecting the conversational energy they get from TikTok creators, only to find rigid service models that feel completely alien to how they actually shop and discover products. The solution isn't more polished campaigns or exclusive launches. These digitally native consumers want entertaining content that feels real, not aspirational theater. They want to understand craftsmanship, participate in resale ecosystems, and feel like brands actually respect their intelligence. When your target audience can spot performative marketing from a mile away, authenticity becomes your only competitive advantage.

GenZ is often lumped into a single generational group, where the assumption is that c.14 million people behave in similar ways. Of course, the reality is that there are many different shades of preferences and behaviours within any generational group. But perhaps none quite as diverse or paradoxical as GenZ. Growing up through successive periods of rapid upheaval, Gen Z are the first mobile-first generation, raised on smartphones, social platforms and digital payments. Their formative years have been defined by a pandemic that rewired shopping overnight, a cost-of-living crisis that redefined value, climate anxiety that influences brand choices and now the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), all compressed into their teens and early twenties. Our latest research with RSM focuses precisely on the many sides of GenZ behaviour when it comes to shopping and their varying outlooks on life. And also just how much variety there is between the late teens and the late twenties. This group is already hugely important. They account for around £26bn of non-food spending today, which is expected to rise to £38bn by 2035 as their commercial significance grows. But the habits being formed now will shape how brands need to evolve. Take ‘search’ as an example. While Google remains the #1 avenue of discovery for 25-28 year olds, 18-24 year olds rank social media higher. In essence, TikTok and Instagram are more influential channels for the youngest consumers. They value creator content and peer validation which is driving their choices. Shopping happens while scrolling. Take BookTok as an example. It's driven real book sales and pulled younger shoppers into physical bookstores. Social discovery generates actual footfall, not just engagement metrics. The numbers back this up: UK Gen Z will spend £3.4bn through social commerce in 2025 alone. And discovery doesn't stop at checkout as one in three Gen Z use social media for styling tips after they've already bought something. Many them will also post their positive experience, becoming brand ambassadors and while widening the discovery funnel for new customers. Key data points worth knowing: ➡️ 68% of Gen Z prefer shopping on smartphones – mobile is their gateway to everything ➡️ Only 28% are brand loyal – the rest mix brands (33%) or actively experiment (25%) ➡️ 34% of Gen Z regularly shop pre-loved items  ➡️ 47% have resold an item within months of purchase – ownership is fluid, and resale is built into their buying decisions They are also in many ways paradoxical. The generation positioned as eco-warriors and caring about sustainability the most are the same consumers powering Chinese commerce and fast fashion. Indeed, our research showed that 59% admit their generation talks more about sustainability than they practice – there's a gap between values and behaviour. Download the full report here > https://lnkd.in/eHugCUAk Great to work with Lisa Alty & Jacqui Baker on this

After months of studying customer buying behaviors at Rubans Accessories, I discovered something quite unique. Gen Z isn’t buying jewellery the way Millennials did. For them, jewellery isn’t about inheritance.  It’s about intention. They care less about how many grams it weighs, and more about what it says when they walk into a room. Is this jewellery losing relevance? No, I’d rather say, it’s shed its stiffness. And in doing so, it’s found new life. In a recent market survey we ran, over 80% of Gen Z shoppers said they’d rather wear a necklace that speaks to them than one that doesn’t. Because Owning is no longer the flex. Expression is. Personalization is the new economy. Think about it: Your nani wore her wedding bangles for a lifetime. Your mom saved hers for special family occasions. But your daughter? - She’ll borrow a matha patti for a Friday night out. - Pair silver Jhumkas with Jordan 1s for a shopping trip. - Style a Kundan choker with cargo pants at a music fest. She is not invested in building a safe locker. She wants to build a mood board.  An identity – Curated & Personal. As a brand builder, this made me pause. If we’re only designing for price points and catalogs, we’ll miss what this generation is really asking for: Connection. Context. Character. So now the real challenge isn’t just designing something beautiful. It’s designing something believable & personalized. That’s where the magic lives. And that’s where the future is headed. Do you agree? Would love to know your insights!

Are you struggling to identify who your customer is? Here are 5 tried & and tested ways that I've helped small business owners that work. 1. Market Research and Analysis: Conduct comprehensive market research to understand consumer behaviours, preferences, demographics, and purchasing patterns. Use surveys, interviews, and data analytics to gather insights into who is buying your products, why they are buying them, and what drives their purchasing decisions. 2. Create Customer Personas: Develop detailed customer personas that represent different segments of your target audience. These personas should include demographic information (age, gender, income), psychographic details (lifestyle, values, interests), and buying behaviour (preferences, needs, challenges). This helps in visualising and understanding your customers better. 3. Track and Analyse Sales Data: Utilise sales data and analytics tools to track and analyse customer buying behaviour. Look for patterns in purchasing frequency, preferred products, average order value, and the channels through which they make purchases (in-store, online, mobile). 4. Engage with Customers: Interact with your customers through various channels—social media, surveys, feedback forms, or direct communication—to gather their opinions, preferences, and feedback. Engaging with them helps in understanding their needs, pain points, and desires better. 5. Competitor Analysis: Analyse your competitors' customer base. Understand who their target customers are and what strategies they use to attract and retain them. This analysis can reveal potential gaps or opportunities in the market that you can capitalise on to attract a specific customer segment. By combining these methods, you can create a comprehensive understanding of your target customer, allowing you to tailor your products, marketing strategies, and customer experiences to better meet their needs and preferences. I'm Bradley, an e-commerce expert with over 25 years of retail experience. If you would like to know how I may be able to help your business, feel free to drop me a DM. We can then have a no-obligation chat together.

Your customer journey map is missing the 8 touchpoints that matter most. You've optimised your ads, polished your landing pages, and A/B tested your emails to death. But whilst you've been obsessing over the obvious touchpoints, your customers have been forming opinions about your brand in places you've completely overlooked. These hidden moments of truth determine whether customers stick around or silently disappear. The good news? Your competitors are probably ignoring them too. 1. Pre-awareness Influences • What it is: Social conversations & word-of-mouth before formal brand discovery • Why it's missed: Difficult to track & attribute • Optimisation tip: Create shareable content specifically designed for peer-to-peer sharing • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 2. Post-Purchase Onboarding • What it is: The critical first 24-48 hours after purchase when buyers seek validation • Why it's missed: Teams focus on acquisition, not retention • Optimisation tip: Create "success accelerator" emails with usage instructions • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 3. Product Documentation • What it is: Help guides, FAQs, & support materials • Why it's missed: Often delegated to technical teams without marketing input • Optimisation tip: Inject brand personality into help documentation • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐ 4. Customer Support Interactions • What it is: The conversations with service teams that shape perception • Why it's missed: Viewed as cost center, not marketing opportunity • Optimisation tip: Create scripts that highlight complementary products/features • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5. Digital "Dead Ends" • What it is: 404 pages, out-of-stock notifications, & other negative pathways • Why it's missed: Seen as technical errors, not opportunities • Optimisation tip: Transform dead ends into discovery points with recommendations • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐ 6. Transaction Confirmations • What it is: Receipts, shipping notifications, & order confirmations • Why it's missed: Treated as operational communications only • Optimisation tip: Include personalised next-best action recommendations • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 7. Post-Usage Check-ins • What it is: The period after customer has used your product for intended purpose • Why it's missed: Customer journey maps often end at purchase or initial use • Optimisation tip: Create timely follow-ups based on typical usage patterns • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 8. Community Participation • What it is: Customer-to-customer interactions in forums & social spaces • Why it's missed: Difficult to scale & often understaffed • Optimisation tip: Identify & empower customer advocates within communities • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Your marketing doesn't end where your analytics dashboard stops tracking. The brands that will win tomorrow are already investing in these invisible touchpoints today. Which one will you optimise first? ♻️ Found this helpful? Repost to share with your network.  ⚡ Want more content like this? Hit follow Maya Moufarek.