Six months ago, a wellness brand came to us convinced they knew exactly why customers loved their products. “It’s the organic ingredients,” the founder explained confidently. “People care about clean beauty.”
They’d built their entire marketing strategy around this assumption. Organic certifications featured prominently on packaging. Ad campaigns highlighted natural ingredients. Email sequences educated customers about the benefits of chemical-free formulations.
Then we asked their customers a simple question: “What’s your #1 reason for choosing our brand over another product?”
The top answer? “It actually works on my sensitive skin.”
Not a single customer mentioned organic ingredients in their top three reasons for purchasing.
This disconnect between founder assumptions and customer reality isn’t rare—it’s the norm. Most CPG brands build entire businesses around what they think customers want instead of what customers actually value.
The Assumption Trap
When founders create products, they start with their own motivations, problems, and preferences. This creates a dangerous feedback loop where every business decision gets filtered through the founder’s perspective rather than the customer’s reality.
The echo chamber effect happens gradually:
- Founders surround themselves with people who think like them
- Early customers often resemble the founders demographically and psychographically
- Team members reinforce existing assumptions rather than challenging them
- Success metrics focus on what’s easy to measure rather than what drives purchase decisions
By the time the business scales, the gap between founder assumptions and customer reality has become a chasm. Marketing messages miss the mark, product development focuses on features customers don’t care about, and competitive positioning highlights benefits that don’t matter.
The cost compounds over time: Wasted marketing spend on messages that don’t resonate. Product development cycles focused on improvements customers don’t value. Pricing strategies based on value propositions that exist only in the founder’s mind.
The 5% Who Ask Instead of Assume
The brands that break through this pattern don’t guess what customers want—they systematically discover it. They’ve learned that asking the right questions reveals insights that no amount of internal brainstorming can produce.
These questions aren’t generic customer satisfaction surveys or demographic questionnaires. They’re specifically designed to uncover the psychological and practical drivers behind purchase decisions.
Question 1: The Attribution Reality Check “How did you first hear about our brand?”
Most brands think they know which marketing channels drive customers. They look at last-click attribution, review Google Analytics reports, and make budget decisions based on platform analytics.
But customers don’t experience marketing the way attribution tools track it. They might see an Instagram ad, forget about it, hear about the brand from a friend, Google the company name, and purchase through a Facebook retargeting ad.
Which channel gets credit in your analytics? Facebook. What actually drove the purchase? The combination of social proof from Instagram, word-of-mouth validation, and brand search intent.
Open-ended attribution questions reveal the messy reality of customer journeys that analytics can’t capture.
Question 2: The Use Case Discovery “Why do you use our product? What outcome are you most interested in?”
This question prevents the most expensive mistake CPG brands make: competing for the wrong customers.
A protein powder company might assume customers want muscle building, so they target fitness enthusiasts with high-protein messaging. But their actual customers might be busy parents using the product as a convenient breakfast replacement.
Same product, completely different use case, entirely different target market. The company could spend years trying to compete with muscle-building supplements when they should be positioning against meal replacement shakes.
Question 3: The Competitive Differentiation Test “What’s your #1 reason for choosing our brand over another product? Please be as specific as possible.”
Most brands believe they know their competitive advantages. Faster shipping, better ingredients, lower prices, superior customer service. They build marketing campaigns around these assumed differentiators.
But customers might choose the brand for reasons that never appeared in focus groups or competitive analyses. Maybe it’s the packaging design that fits better in their bathroom cabinet. Maybe it’s the subscription frequency that aligns with their usage patterns. Maybe it’s simply that the brand was recommended by someone they trust.
The specificity instruction is crucial. Generic answers like “better quality” don’t provide actionable insights. Specific answers like “the pump dispenser doesn’t get clogged like other brands” reveal fixable competitive advantages.
Question 4: The Identity Connection “What are your favorite hobbies or activities?”
This question uncovers something most brands miss: the identity associations that drive purchase decisions and price tolerance.
People don’t just buy products—they buy products that reinforce their identity or help them become who they want to be. The CrossFit athlete, the minimalist, the busy executive, the conscious consumer.
When customers see your product as part of their identity, price becomes less important. They’re not just buying a supplement—they’re buying validation that they’re the type of person who invests in their health.
Question 5: The Self-Improvement Motivation “Which aspects of your health/fitness/appearance do you want to improve?”
This is the most direct question about customer motivation, and it often reveals misalignment between marketing messages and actual customer goals.
A skincare brand might focus on anti-aging benefits while their customers primarily want to reduce acne. A fitness supplement might emphasize performance enhancement while customers mainly want weight management.
Understanding what customers actually want to improve—not what you think they should want to improve—shapes everything from product development to advertising creative.
The Research Implementation Framework
Timing Matters These questions work best when sent to customers 2-4 weeks after their first purchase. They’ve had time to use the product but the purchase decision is still fresh in their memory.
Channel Strategy Email surveys typically get the highest response rates, but the specific approach matters. Personal, conversational language outperforms formal survey language. Questions that feel like genuine curiosity get better responses than questions that feel like market research.
Sample Size Reality You don’t need hundreds of responses to identify patterns. Thirty to fifty detailed answers usually reveal the major themes that should inform your strategy.
Analysis Approach Look for patterns rather than outliers. If multiple customers mention the same unexpected benefit or use case, that’s a signal worth investigating. If the same competitive advantage appears repeatedly, that’s a positioning opportunity.
The Compound Effect of Customer Understanding
Brands that consistently ask these questions don’t just avoid wrong assumptions—they build systematic advantages:
More effective marketing because messages align with actual customer motivations Better product development because improvements focus on features customers value Stronger competitive positioning because differentiation is based on real advantages Higher customer lifetime value because the brand resonates with customer identity
Moving Beyond Guesswork
The question isn’t whether you should research customer motivations. Every successful brand eventually does this. The question is whether you’ll start now or after wasting months building products and campaigns based on assumptions.
The brands that scale predictably are the ones that replace founder intuition with customer insight early in their growth trajectory.
The brands that struggle are the ones that discover they’ve been building for the wrong customers, highlighting the wrong benefits, and competing in the wrong category—usually after they’ve invested heavily in the wrong direction.
The five questions above aren’t just research tools. They’re strategic advantages disguised as simple customer outreach.
Because in CPG, the winners aren’t the brands with the best products. They’re the brands that best understand why customers actually buy their products.
And that understanding starts with asking instead of assuming.
