Most businesses still define their customers by age, income, geography, or life stage. While those variables may tell you who your customer is, they rarely explain why they make the decisions they do. And when markets become more fragmented, understanding the “why” becomes far more valuable than understanding the “who.”
At the core of why people do what they do, including why they buy what they buy, are deep-seated human mindsets: things like the desire for self-expression, a yearning for connection, a need for ongoing achievement. But mindsets have never mattered more than they do right now. Consumers today are more fragmented than at any point in recent memory, organizing themselves around shared values, beliefs, and worldviews rather than the demographic categories that have long anchored brand strategy. According to Edelman’s 2026 Trust Barometer, seven in ten people globally are now hesitant or unwilling to trust someone who holds different values or sees the world differently than they do. Two consumers who look identical on paper, same age, same income, same area code, may approach the same brand in completely opposite ways because they fundamentally see the world differently. Mindset segments are how you find the real signal inside that fragmentation.
For example, within the context of wellness, there may be a subset of consumers whose mindset is about being true to themselves, whereas others are looking to achieve certain wellness goals (like exercise or healthy diet), and still others are more invested in finding a community of people with similar wellness beliefs with whom they can connect. While these are the types of customers that wellness brands may want to target, each group would approach the exact same situation with different attitudes and likely end up with different outcomes. Brands who lump them all together would miss out on an opportunity to truly connect with their core consumers.
There is a misperception that mindsets are harder to operationalize than simple demographic variables, but targeting consumers based on their interests and attitudes is becoming standard practice across digital and social platforms. Historically, one of the challenges with mindset segmentation was activation. Today, advances in data science, machine learning, and agentic AI make it possible to identify, model, and engage mindset-driven audiences at a scale that would have been impossible just a few years ago.
Moreover, mindsets are much more enduring than short-lived trends, which means brands that are able to understand and tap into them are well-positioned for success in today’s rapidly changing world. Change is accelerating and new trends come and go faster than we can keep up with them. So while consumers’ minute-by-minute needs and interests may evolve, their underlying mindsets have proven to be remarkably long-lasting.
Consumer engagement requires identifying and solving a real human need, then bringing these solutions to life seamlessly across channels. Mindsets allow you to better engage your consumers by deeply understanding their unique needs and the value you provide them — not just the product you sell or the services you offer — but the way you speak to their intrinsic needs (needs they might not even be able to articulate).
Ultimately, mindsets should become the guardrails that guide your future decision making. Understanding the mindsets of your target consumers and being clear on what benefit you offer them can (and should) influence all aspects of business, from the products and services you offer to the role physical and digital elements play in the overall customer experience.
Identifying consumer mindsets is one of the first things Jackman does with our engagement partners. Here are some of the ways we’ve helped our engagement partners learn and how those key insights have shaped their brands moving forward:
Rona
For this home improvement retailer, the deeper insight wasn’t about products at all — it was about expertise. Their most valuable customers, whether seasoned pros or aspiring DIYers, took real pride in doing a job well and wanted to be treated as experts rather than simply sold to. Knowing this, RONA moved away from competing on the same undifferentiated home-improvement playbook as everyone else and embraced a clearer, more ownable role: the company of experts helping experts (and aspiring experts). Early results bear it out, with re-bannered RONA+ stores seeing roughly a 20% sales lift over their pre-conversion baseline.
Waitrose
This beloved British grocer had a 120-year legacy but was steadily losing relevance and share. By combining mindset segmentation with their transactional data, we built a true 360-degree view of their customers and found the biggest opportunity hiding in plain sight: the food lover who wanted to do their full shop with a grocer that genuinely shared their passion. That insight became a single guiding proposition — passionate partners serving food lovers — that shaped everything from the in-store experience to a brand-defining new format. The momentum has been real, with ten consecutive quarters of customer growth and the highest customer-satisfaction scores in the brand’s history.
The brands that thrive over the next decade won’t be those chasing every new trend. They’ll be the brands that understand the enduring human motivations that sit beneath those trends. Mindsets provide a strategic compass, helping organizations make smarter decisions, adapt to change, and build stronger relationships with the people who matter most.
Getting clear on your customer and the benefit you provide them will give your brand the flexibility to adapt to new challenges and changing customer behaviours.
For nearly two decades, Jackman has used mindset segmentation to uncover the human motivations that drive customer behaviour and to help organizations build more meaningful relationships with the people they serve.
To learn more about Jackman’s work, dive deeper into customer insights or simply start a conversation on how to move your business forward—get in touch.
