‘Do you want fries with that?’ We all recognise this question and know it is about ‘upselling’ your customer, with the aggregate upselling dollars improving profitability. However, with the changing economic environment and its impact on customer lifestyles, businesses must identify and navigate opportunities differently.

Based on research and our own experiences, consumer lifestyles are becoming more uncertain due to the inflationary impact on what a dollar will buy. The time-value-money financial principle has accelerated since the COVID-19 economic shutdown.

So, the underlying factor that businesses need to incorporate into their marketing approach is how they will continue to grow when household disposable expenditure, buying power, and risk-taking are diminishing. As all businesses know, if a company is not increasing its revenue, its costs of operation and customer acquisition take a bigger slice of the revenue percentage due to the same time-value-money financial principle.

When faced with this dilemma, the most obvious solution is to increase the customer’s price and find further reasons to extract more from the customer at the point of sale, e.g., by applying upselling tactics. However, with the uncertainty surrounding external forces that impact customers and their lifestyles, that is not the solution.

What is the Solution?

The current uncertain environment requires a different approach to thinking from business decision-makers and marketing managers.

In this environment, the problem is how you bring affordability and targeted experiences to your product offering.

To get on track, consider what your customers can afford to pay, what they value, and how they would like to experience the solution. Then, work on how you can deliver with your unique set of capabilities to hone your competitive advantage and be meaningful.

STEP 1 – REVIEW SEGMENTATION

• Identify high-quality data from internal and external sources and conduct thorough analysis. Segmenting effectively requires integrating qualitative data with quantitative metrics to reveal the drivers behind purchasing decisions. The granular data pieces will provide valuable insights and spark new thinking.
• Pull from different data input sources. The magic happens when you combine data from various sources to create an overall customer picture.
• Support the data inputs with Generative AI. Generative AI provides an aggregate average of online insights. It can help you understand and evolve customer data insights, as well as build customer lifestyle patterns and images (Anderson, Coveyduc, 2020; Passport, 2025b). By leveraging Generative AI, you can gain deeper insights into customer behaviour and preferences, informing your marketing strategies.
• Develop a ‘customer focus board’ with at least three variations of customer personas, providing a picture of the target customer’s lifestyle. If you are a B2B proposition, target the decision-makers with images and identify the key factors central to their decision-making. Take qualitative snippets from your segmentation data to support your persona profiles and keep them updated with new and changing insights.
• When segments are understood, brands can achieve better results, including opening new lines to attract spending, advocacy, and repeat purchasing.
• Segmentation is an ongoing science that businesses must engage with. Consumer behaviour is constantly changing and adapting in both B2C and B2B environments. Therefore, data refinement is not static; it thrives on iterative updates and consistent evaluation. Businesses should adopt a flexible approach, ensuring that insights remain relevant amidst shifting consumer landscapes and global trends. By doing so, segmentation becomes not just a tool for understanding but a dynamic strategy for sustainable growth.
• Segmentation is the source data stream that will determine your success or failure. Don’t risk not resourcing it.

STEP 2 – WORK TO YOUR CUSTOMER’S BUDGET

• The segmentation data deep dive should provide a clear picture of sustainable customer budget bandwidths. Work within those bands. Do not factor in surprises or upsell. Be authentic, deliver to customer expectations, and design budget options that deliver value.

For example, if a customer plans to eat at a restaurant with their family, offer a budget-friendly meal option that still provides a satisfying dining experience. This approach allows the customer to enjoy your product without worrying about the cost, contributing to advocacy, repeat purchasing, and counteracting scepticism and dissatisfaction.

• Streamline your product offering. Limiting options will enable businesses to focus on the quality of the customer experience within a budget, rather than relying on quantity-focused metrics.

STEP 3– REIMAGINE TARGETED EXPERIENCES

• Quality, convenience, affordability, sustainability, ethics, and wellness are all key considerations in the evolving customer mindset (Passport 2025a; Statista 2025). Designing targeted experiences will require balancing these factors based on lifestyle segmentation for enhanced outcomes.
• Keep your segmentation, customer journey planning, and insights concurrent. Ensure efforts are impactful and prioritise actionable insights over superficial observations. Identifying patterns, preferences, and behaviours aligned with consumer needs and aspirations is meaningful.

For example, a business may notice that a particular segment values eco-conscious packaging, ethical sourcing, and affordability. Such information enables companies to tailor their offerings to meet these customer expectations, thereby fostering loyalty and enhancing customer retention. Moreover, as societal values evolve, incorporating inclusivity and equitable practices can further resonate with target segments, making brands more appealing to today’s consumers (Passport 2025a; Statistica 2025).

• Leverage Generative AI algorithms to help you imagine yourself in your customers’ shoes. Tap into segmented opportunities that offer a different perspective on innovating the customer journey and how the digital and physical pathways interplay to enhance targeted experiences (Anderson & Coveyduc, 2020; Passport, 2025b).
• Personalise communication, integrate seamless functionality and offer real-time reward options to give the customer a direct and sticky connection to the brand. In a digital-driven marketplace, marketers must find ways to design and reward bespoke customer experiences.
• Consider the role of partnerships and collaborations. By working alongside complementary brands or organisations, capabilities and reach can be expanded. For instance, aligning with eco-friendly suppliers or wellness-focused initiatives can enhance brand credibility and customer trust, particularly for segments that value sustainability and health-conscious choices (Passport 2025a).

STEP 4– BUILD CUSTOMER FEEDBACK LOOP

Finally, build a robust yet intuitive feedback loop. Actively seek customer input through surveys, reviews, or digital engagement tools. These tools uncover hidden insights and strengthen the relationship between the brand and its audience. When customers see their opinions influencing product offerings or service enhancements, loyalty deepens, and advocacy grows (Hagiu & Wright, 2023). Implementing a feedback loop ensures that your business continually improves and meets customer needs.

One final comment: To remain ahead of these shifting dynamics, foster an agile mindset within your organisation. This involves adopting a culture of experimentation, where testing new ideas—no matter how challenging traditional norms—becomes routine. Agile thinking enables businesses to quickly pivot in response to emerging trends and customer preferences, ensuring relevance and resonance (Passport 2025a).

Innovation and adopting different thinking lead to transformation, which offers growth opportunities to reframe challenges in an uncertain environment.

Contact Genis Marketing and Digital to help you uncover and navigate opportunities for your business.

References

Anderson L, Coveyduc J. 2020, Artificial Intelligence for Business, John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey

Hagiu A., Wright J 2023, To get Better Customer Data, Build Feedback Loops into Your Products, Harvard Business Review, July 11, 2023.

Passport 2025a, Voice of the Consumer: Lifestyles Survey 2025 Key Insights, Euromonitor, April 2025.

Passport 2025b, Megatrends: Experience More with GenAI for Value Creation, Euromonitor, March 2025.

Statista 2025, The New Consumer Reality Insights and Strategies for Shifting Markets, Statistaplus.com