Businesses feel comfortable thinking they know their customer well: a buyer compares, analyzes, reads the composition, examines the website, checks reviews — and only then makes a decision.
This sounds logical. And convenient.
But in reality, everything happens differently. Decisions are often made in 3 seconds — in a pharmacy, on Instagram, on a supermarket shelf, at the moment of “saw — understood — trusted — bought”.
Many strategies are built on assumptions that have never been tested.
Thoughts like “our client always analyzes” turn into campaigns, packaging, landing pages. But the client doesn’t analyze — they react.
And when you think a client is scrolling through a landing page, reading the text, comparing properties and prices — they’ve already left. Illusions are costly. And they are what hinder growth — even for good products.
👉 This article discusses false assumptions on which marketing is still based: the main myths, short cases, and a simple tool that returns us to the real behavior of buyers — offline, online, and on social networks.
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Key False Statements on Which Marketing Is Built
Marketing in companies is often based not on facts but on stereotypes. Because marketing has been built on “established truths” for decades.
They are repeated in briefs, presentations, textbooks, conferences, sales departments — as if they are laws of physics:
- “The buyer makes rational decisions — they compare, read, analyze.”
- “People choose based on price.”
- “We just need to create a funnel, and sales will come.”
- “If someone liked a post, they are interested.”
- “Loyal clients will buy anyway — just give them a discount.”
- “Our client is a woman aged 35–45 who takes care of herself.”
These statements are convenient. They simplify the world, giving an illusion of control.
But research by McKinsey, Nielsen, Bain & Co, and dozens of cases show:
in reality, people behave differently.
Let’s figure out which stereotypes still dictate business strategy — and why they are so dangerous.
1. “The Client Studies Everything Before Buying”
How business thinks:
The buyer compares, reads the composition, studies the landing page, checks reviews.
What really happens: The client doesn’t analyze — they recognize and react.
— In a pharmacy, selection often goes by visual cues: packaging color, familiar words (“anti-acne,” “retinol,” “niacinamide,” “SPF”) and key promise.
— On marketplaces — by the first photo and price.
— On Instagram — by visuals, phrases like “only 1 left,” and reviews in Stories format.
Fact:
– Customer Experience Dive (2025): most decisions are emotional and impulsive.
– Nielsen: 13 seconds to make a decision in an offline store, 19 seconds online
– P&G First Moment of Truth: 3–7 seconds are the key selection moment at the shelf
Conclusion:
The buyer might “grab” familiar terms — but doesn’t conduct deep analysis. They don’t study — they recognize and trust.
2. “Buyers Choose by Price”
One of the most persistent myths is: “Price is everything.” But if that were the case, Zara wouldn’t be selling the same shirts as mass-market at three times the price — and wouldn’t be topping sales charts. Or: why do pharmacy creams at 40€ continue to sell steadily when there are alternatives nearby for 6?
🔍 Example: In marketing tests, consumers often choose not the lowest price, but the “golden mean” — what confirms their choice. This is the “price anchor” effect: the first price seen shapes expectations and justifies the purchase.
Fact:
– Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (2022): it’s not the absolute price that works, but price–value perception.
– Price anchor effect: the first seen price sets a benchmark for all subsequent ones.
Price is a signal, but not the only one. Manage anchors and simplicity of choice.
3. “Loyal Clients = Most Profitable”
How business thinks:
Retaining those who already buy is needed — they will fuel growth. Frequent purchases = loyalty = profitability.
What really happens:
People buy from several brands at once. And “loyalty” is often just convenience, not attachment.
Fact:
– Byron Sharp “How Brands Grow”: 72% of Coca-Cola “fans” also buy Pepsi.
– Bain & Co: brands grow thanks to new buyers, not retention.
– Harvard Business Review: frequent buyers are not necessarily the most profitable; managing loyalty and profit are different tasks
– The 80/20 rule (“20% of customers give 80% of sales”) doesn’t work long-term: observation over a year shows that active clients buy less, and half of sales come from those who previously rarely or never bought
📉 And most importantly: every year even large brands “lose” a significant portion of buyers. The growth strategy is to add new buyers and increase mental/physical availability, rather than “squeezing” existing ones.
Byron Sharp and Bain & Co proved:
“Buyers purchase different brands. Even ‘loyal’ Coca-Cola fans buy Pepsi 72% of the time.”
4. “Marketer = Client”
One of the most dangerous myths.
How business thinks:
“We would buy it → then buyers will want it too.”
What really happens:
Marketers and designers often project their tastes. But specialist tastes ≠ audience behavior.
Example:
Omniscient Digital: replacing a font with Comic Sans (against the team’s opinion) increased revenue by 70%.
Conclusion:
The taste of the team ≠ audience behavior. Validate hypotheses with tests, not the room’s opinion
5. “Social Media Sells”
How business thinks:
If Reels gained 30 thousand views, sales will grow.
What really happens:
Engagement ≠ revenue. Without a funnel, calls to action, and purchase logic — it’s just a show. Likes ≠ money. Followers ≠ sales.
🙈 Example: Many brands are thrilled with reach on Reels or TikTok, but don’t track how many people actually move to purchase. Thousands of likes on Instagram don’t guarantee a purchase if there are no lead magnets and CTAs.
Fact:
Act-On, HBR: High social media engagement does not equal profit; likes and followers do not translate into money without calculating ROI and a funnel with CTAs and lead magnets — these are “vanity metrics.” Studies show: social networks give results only if a logic is built: attention → trust → conversion. Without this — just a show without sales.
6. “Social Media Follower Is a Loyal Client”
How business thinks:
If someone follows, they’re interested and willing to buy.
What really happens:
People follow brands for discounts, contests, and “just in case.” They are not the most valuable clients.
Fact:
MarketingSherpa: 56% of brand followers on social media come for discounts and contests and are not the most profitable customers.
7. “Customer Surveys Reveal the Truth”
How business thinks:
“We ran a survey — so now we know what the customer wants.”
What actually happens:
Customers often don’t realize why they buy. In a survey they say one thing, but act differently.
Fact:
Customer Experience Dive (2025):
– 61% of companies use surveys,
– Only 16% of customers believe their opinion changes anything,
– Decisions are made emotionally, not rationally.
We listen not only to words, but to clicks, repeat purchases, and refusals — that’s where the truth lies.
8. «We know our customer profile for sure»
How business reasons:
“We wrote up avatars: a 35-year-old woman, likes skincare, looks for discounts, lives in city N. That’s enough.”
What really happens:
The customer profile quickly becomes outdated if it’s built on clichés and assumptions.
The brand isn’t speaking to a real buyer, but to a cardboard cutout.
- Age, gender, and income explain little about behavior: a 35-year-old woman can be a doctor, an artist, or a stay-at-home mom — and make completely different choices.
- A buyer may want a premium cream even if she saves on other categories.
- Real scenarios depend not on “gender and age,” but on motive: “solving a problem,” “treating myself,” “buying on recommendation.”
Research says
- Aamplify: template avatars are misleading; it’s more effective to build on problems and behavior.
- FasterCapital: segments need to be updated, taking into account psychographics and context — otherwise segmentation doesn’t work.
- Omniscient Digital: marketers project their own tastes (example with Comic Sans), which distorts the customer profile.
Conclusion
The customer ≠ a template persona. Real understanding is not a label, but the context of behavior and the motive behind action. Without this, the product will not fit into the customer’s real life.
9. «E-mail marketing is dead»
How business thinks
Everyone is on social media. People don’t read emails anymore. Email is the past.
What really happens
Email is one of the most reliable and profitable channels.
When a subscriber receives relevant content, a bonus, or a reminder — they come back. Not through Instagram, but via the link in an email.
- Email allows you to push customers more precisely: segment, personalize, remind.
- Unlike social media, reach does not depend on algorithms or feeds.
- Behavior in email is more predictable: if a customer opens an email and clicks, the probability of purchase is higher than with a random Reels viewer.
What the data says
DMA Report: average ROI of email marketing is $36 for every $1 invested.
Statista 2024: 77% of consumers want to receive offers specifically by email.
Example
Sephora builds retention through newsletters: recommendations, loyalty bonuses, reminders about favorite products.
Conclusion
Email is not dead. What’s dead is boring and irrelevant email. A good newsletter is not “information noise,” but a personal service.
10. «Marketplaces sell by themselves»
How business thinks
“We’ll put the product on Amazon / Ozon / Wildberries — sales will come automatically.”
What really happens
On a marketplace, your product is a drop in the ocean.
A buyer chooses in 15–20 seconds, and if the product card doesn’t catch attention — you’re invisible.
- What matters: the first photo, number of reviews, rating, “delivery tomorrow” button.
- Without working on the product card, reviews, and promotion — even a good product just sits there.
What the data says
Nielsen: on average, 19 seconds are spent choosing a product online.
McKinsey: 70% of buyers click on 1–3 top listings, almost always those at the top.
Example
Dozens of identical phone cases on Amazon: the winner isn’t the best product, but the one with:
▪️ 1000+ reviews
▪️ a strong first photo
▪️ promotion on the product card
Conclusion
A marketplace is an algorithm. To sell, you must work on visuals, reviews, and ratings.
Strategies built on assumptions collapse the moment of first customer contact — on the shelf, in the Instagram feed, on the marketplace.
Case Studies: How Leaders Disprove Marketing Myths
Marketing is often based on abstract behavior models: the sales funnel, “warming up the audience,” storytelling. But when you check real purchases, it turns out: people act more simply and faster. Triggers, context, and situations (behavioral scenarios) influence decisions more strongly than carefully crafted communications.
These cases show how brands lose effectiveness when they follow illusions, and what really drives sales.
Case 1. Zara and Sephora: Ignoring real behavior scenarios
Claim: “Customers follow the classic funnel: saw → interested → researched → bought.”
Reality: Purchases often follow situational triggers, not stages.
📍 Zara: In 2022–2024, marketing promoted capsules, styling selections, and eco-messaging. Demand growth aligned with seasonal events (vacations, graduations) — confirmed by fashion segment sales data (Retail Dive, Deloitte).
📍 Sephora: In offline stores, a significant share of sales came from urgent triggers (“need a gift/lipstick/mask now”), not from website browsing or storytelling. Marketing emphasized email series and reviews, but main conversion came from simple in-store decisions.
🧠 Result:
When strategy is built on an abstract “interest funnel” instead of real actions — the brand loses efficiency.
💬 Conclusion: Real scenarios are not theory — they’re events, tasks, and signals that work “here and now.”
Case 2. E-commerce / Instagram shops — the myth of the “long warm-up”
Claim: To sell online, you need to “warm up” the audience with stories and posts for a long time.
Reality: Sales follow the scenario “saw → understood → clicked.” Everything else is excessive if clarity is missing.
📍 Shopify case studies and A/B tests in beauty show: Reels with “only 1 left” or “20€ until the end of the week” generate more sales than marathons, missions, or “engaging reels.”
📍 In beauty Instagram, a product card with “SPF 50 / non-greasy / 19€” works better than poetic text and philosophical brand missions.
Fact: Shopify reports that most DTC purchases happen within the first visits. Simple factors decide: quality of photo, clear price, and scarcity messaging. Booking.com and Amazon have used scarcity (“only 2 rooms left,” “3 items in stock”) for years — raising conversion by 6–9% (Cialdini, 2009; PwC, 2021).
Conclusion: When marketing focuses on “engagement” instead of reaction scenarios, businesses see likes but not sales. Instagram and marketplaces are channels of instant decisions. What works: clear photos, clear price, and scarcity. The “long warm-up” is not always needed.
Tool: Real Scenario Map
Companies often draw funnels and journey maps 10 steps long. In practice, such analysis rarely helps sales. Instead of abstract schemes, you need a tool that applies to any touchpoint — from a pharmacy shelf to a marketplace product card. The scenario map shows which signals work instantly and which only get in the way.
How people actually buy — in 4 steps
- Perception → Interpretation → Confirmation → Action
Not “studied the landing page.”
Not “compared 3 brands.”
Not “read the company mission.”
But a scenario triggered — a simple reaction to a signal immediately understood.
In offline sales (pharmacy, supermarket, retail):
| Scenario | What works |
|---|---|
| Saw — glance at the shelf | Package color, familiar word (“anti-acné,” “SPF,” “retinol”) |
| Understood — what it is for | Clear positioning (solves a specific task: for acne, sensitive skin, itch relief) |
| Trust — brand or promise | Packaging shape, price tag, “pharmacy” style, or well-known brand |
| Take — impulse | Clear price, fast recognition, no barriers |
✅ The customer doesn’t compare — they recognize a familiar code.
In online sales (landing, marketplace, social media):
| Scenario | What works |
|---|---|
| Saw — first impression | Product photo, first post image, Stories |
| Understood — why I need it | Banner text, headline, 1–2 clear benefits (not 9 bullet points) |
| Trust — is it reliable | Number of reviews, recognizable brand, product card details |
| Take — clicking the button | “In stock,” “Only 1 left,” clear CTA (not “Learn more”) |
✅ If it clicks — they continue. If it’s complicated — they close.
What makes a scenario work?
- Simplicity — one signal, one promise, one CTA
- Familiar code — packaging/phrase/visual instantly recognizable
- Context — it’s obvious who it’s for and why, no decoding needed
What ruins a scenario?
- Extra blocks, abstract phrases (“innovation,” “transformation,” “mission”)
- Overloaded product card (long lists, unclear names, vague “learn more” button)
- Unclear visuals (neutral photos, complex text, “for everyone” style)
Conclusion
The main mistake companies make is replacing real customer behavior data with schemes convenient for themselves. Illusions — about rational choice, “forever loyalty,” or “long warming up” — create a pretty picture but don’t explain actual sales.
Facts show the opposite: the buyer acts quickly, based on familiar codes and triggers, not ten-step models. Therefore, the task of business is not to invent new avatars or draw complex funnels, but to systematically test touchpoints and decision scenarios.
