For years, marketing has relied on personas—those neatly packaged, semi-fictional representations of customers that claim to simplify complex decision-making. Whether it’s “Emma, the eco-conscious millennial” in B2C or “James, the cost-cutting CFO” in B2B, personas are meant to guide marketing strategies with a clear picture of the target audience. But here’s the problem: personas are often oversimplified, assumptive, and dangerously misleading.
In reality, people don’t make decisions based on static profiles. Decision-making is fluid, context-dependent, and influenced by far more than job titles or demographics. The real challenge for marketers isn’t to refine personas but to better understand how decisions are actually made and what influences them in real time.
The Flawed Logic of Personas
At their core, personas rely on generalisations. They assume that people make predictable choices based on their role, age, or interests—when in reality, decision-making is far more complex.
Personas Ignore Context - People don’t always behave the same way. A price-sensitive shopper might splurge on convenience when pressed for time. A cost-conscious CFO might sign off on an expensive software investment if the ROI is compelling. Personas fail to account for these shifting priorities, reducing individuals to caricatures rather than capturing the reality of decision-making.
They Oversimplify Psychology - Marketing personas tend to focus on external traits—age, job title, income—while ignoring the psychological and emotional factors that truly drive decision-making. Fear of making the wrong choice, social proof, habit, and cognitive biases all play a role. A B2C buyer might justify a luxury purchase as a “reward,” while a B2B buyer might resist switching suppliers due to loss aversion—even if the new option is better.
They Fail to Capture Decision-Making Units (DMUs) - Whether in B2B or B2C, most decisions aren’t made in isolation. In B2B, a buying decision might involve finance, procurement, IT, and operations. In B2C, a major purchase like a car, home appliance, or holiday is rarely decided by one person alone. Even smaller consumer purchases—like a family choosing a streaming service—are influenced by multiple people with different priorities. Personas don’t reflect these decision-making ecosystems, making them a poor tool for understanding how purchasing actually happens.
The danger of personas lies in their assumptive and self-reinforcing nature—much like horoscopes, they tell marketers what they expect to see rather than revealing the true complexity of decision-making. How often are personas rigorously tested for completeness or accuracy?
More often than not, they are built from selective data points, internal biases, and anecdotal observations, forming an incomplete and preferential perspective rather than an objective reflection of reality. Personas tend to highlight the traits that align with preconceived marketing strategies while ignoring inconvenient or contradictory behaviours. This creates a false sense of understanding, where marketers confidently tailor campaigns to a fictionalised version of their audience rather than the nuanced, data-driven truth.
Ultimately, personas are not much more than educated guesses—assumptive, incomplete, and skewed toward what marketers hope their customers are, rather than who they actually are.
Decision-Making Units (DMUs): The Overlooked Reality
A Decision-Making Unit (DMU) is the group of individuals who influence and make a purchasing decision. In B2B, this could include the economic buyer (who controls the budget), the technical buyer (who ensures feasibility), and the end-users (who actually use the product). In B2C, a DMU could be a couple discussing a mortgage, parents and children debating a vacation, or even friends influencing each other’s fashion choices.
Recognising DMUs is critical because:
The “decision-maker” isn’t always the final authority. A CMO may want new marketing software, but the CFO must approve it. A teenager might desire a gaming console, but the parents hold the credit card.
Influencers within the DMU can derail or accelerate the purchase. A skeptical IT team can block a software deal, just as a friend’s recommendation can push a consumer to buy a particular brand.
The composition of a DMU changes depending on context. A CEO might personally approve a strategic investment but delegate smaller purchases to a manager. A parent might decide on groceries alone but consult their children when buying a family car.
By focusing on who is involved in decision-making and how they interact, rather than relying on static personas, marketers can craft far more effective strategies.
Why Understanding Decision-Making Matters More Than Profiling Buyers
Rather than chasing the illusion of the perfect persona, marketers need to shift their focus to the real process of decision-making.
Decision-Making is Context-Driven - People don’t always make choices the same way. Urgency, time constraints, financial pressures, and competing priorities all affect how decisions are made—but personas ignore this dynamic reality. Instead of creating an “ideal customer,” marketers should analyse how different situations drive different choices.
Many Influence the Decision, But Few Actually Make It - Whether in B2B or B2C, many voices contribute to a purchasing decision, but the power lies with a much smaller group—or even an individual. Identifying who truly holds decision-making power within a DMU is far more valuable than building generic personas.
Psychology Drives Decisions More Than Demographics - A 25-year-old software engineer and a 45-year-old CFO may look nothing alike on paper, yet they might be driven by the same psychological triggers—such as risk aversion, desire for social proof, or the fear of missing out (FOMO). Understanding how people think and feel is far more predictive than age, job title, or income bracket.
Process is More Important Than Profile - Two CFOs in different industries may look similar, but their decision-making frameworks may be completely different. One might require months of committee approvals, while the other acts quickly on gut instinct. Instead of focusing on “who” the customer is, marketers should focus on “how” they make decisions and what obstacles or motivations drive them.
The Future: Data-Driven Decision Profiling
To move beyond outdated personas, marketers must embrace data-driven decision profiling—leveraging real-time behavioural analytics, AI-driven sentiment tracking, and in-depth mapping of DMUs. Instead of relying on broad assumptions, marketing should focus on:
Tracking actual purchasing behaviours, not just hypothetical personas.
Identifying the psychological and contextual factors influencing choices.
Mapping out how decisions unfold over time and who holds real influence.
By shifting from persona-driven marketing to decision-driven marketing, businesses can create campaigns that actually resonate with the way people buy—not just the way marketers assume they do.
While some customer profiling and decision-making analysis can be relatively straightforward, much of it is not—it requires deep expertise in data science, behavioural psychology, and real-time analytics to dynamically profile decision-making. The reality is that human choices are shaped by a complex mix of context, emotion, social influence, and cognitive bias—factors that cannot be captured by static personas alone.
Investing in the right expertise, tools, and methodologies to test assumptions, challenge biases, and uncover the true drivers of decision-making is not just a luxury—it’s a competitive necessity. The brands and businesses willing to do the hard yards—digging deeper, engaging customers earlier, and fine-tuning their approach based on real decision science—will be the ones who outmaneuver competitors and win in the race to understand, influence, and serve their customers more effectively.
Time to Retire the Caricatures
The marketing world needs to stop relying on idealised, fictional buyers and start embracing the complex, dynamic nature of real decision-making. Businesses that recognise this will outmaneuver those still clinging to static personas.
Arguably, we already have the data and the science—what’s missing is the ability and willingness to use it effectively. Advances in behavioural economics, neuroscience, and AI-powered analytics have given us unprecedented insight into how decisions are made, what influences them, and how they change over time.
The challenge isn’t a lack of information; it’s that too many businesses are still relying on outdated, assumptive models rather than embracing data-driven, decision-centric strategies. To bridge this gap, we need marketers and strategists who can not only access and interpret this data but also translate it into actionable insights. This means moving beyond simple demographics and static buyer profiles to dynamic, real-time analysis of decision-making processes.
Companies that invest in this capability—hiring the right talent, building the right analytical frameworks, and integrating behavioural science into their strategies—will gain a competitive edge, influencing purchasing decisions with precision rather than guesswork.
It’s time to stop selling to personas and start influencing real decisions, in real contexts, made by real people.
Sources
Behavioral Economics & Decision Science
Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast and Slow
Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein – Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
Dan Ariely – Predictably Irrational
Marketing and Consumer Psychology
Byron Sharp – How Brands Grow
Phil Barden – Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy
Robert Cialdini – Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
B2B Buying & Decision-Making Units (DMUs)
Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon & Pat Spenner – The Challenger Customer: Selling to the Hidden Influencer Who Can Multiply Your Results
Gartner Research on B2B Buying Behavior
Data-Driven Marketing & Analytics
Avinash Kaushik – Web Analytics 2.0
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz – Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are
Groupthink, Bias & The Fallacy of Personas
Irving Janis – Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes
Clayton Christensen – Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice
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