Customer Curiosity: What If Buying Isn’t Just Logic… It’s Also “Who I’m Trying to Be”?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we explain customer buying decisions.

The “standard” way we seem to talk about it (in marketing and beyond) often sounds like this: people become aware of a problem, look for solutions to that problem, weigh things up, consider pros and cons, think about what others expect, work out what feels doable… and then choose.

And to be fair, that’s not wrong. It’s just… sometimes, to me, it feels a bit like we’re describing a robot with a spreadsheet and all the information required to make the best decision.

But I think it's messier than that because real decisions don’t always look like that from the inside, do they?

Even when someone is being sensible, there’s usually more going on in the background: pressure, emotion, timing, confidence, fear of wasting money, fear of getting it wrong, fear of being judged for the choice.

My social psychology and sociology course is pushing me to think more about identity, meaning, and social context, and I’m curious what happens when we bring even a tiny bit of that into everyday marketing.

And there’s another layer I’m getting increasingly curious about:

What if people aren’t just making decisions, they’re trying to embody an identity in that moment?

Not in a grand “this is who I am forever” way. More in a situational way.

Like… who am I trying to be right now?

• the responsible one
• the competent one
• the “I’ve got my act together” one
• the person who delegates instead of firefighting
• the person with good taste
• the person who doesn’t get ripped off
• the person who buys the right thing, not the embarrassing thing

That identity isn’t happening in isolation either. People don’t decide in a vacuum. They decide inside a social world, with roles, expectations, colleagues, bosses, family, budgets, and the reality of needing to justify themselves.

I actually see this in my own work.

I am a Google Ads Specialist; that’s one of the hats I wear (or identities I embody). But even within that, I show up differently depending on the situation.

There’s a “deep in the weeds” version of Google Ads Specialist me that loves the detail, the strategy, the mechanics, the nerdy stuff.

And there’s another version of me that I often bring to client conversations, the one that filters, simplifies, and focuses on what actually helps someone make a decision without feeling overwhelmed.

Same person. Different context. Different way of showing up.

And this is where it gets interesting (at least to me): if I were being marketed a piece of PPC software, what exactly are they trying to support?

Are they speaking to the part of me that wants more control, more detail, more insight, the “let me get into the numbers” part?

Or are they helping me be better at the version of my job that matters most in client relational work, the part where I’m translating complexity into clarity, making confident decisions, and communicating the important bits without bombarding someone with information?

If I’m honest, I can see how the same tool could be positioned in completely different ways depending on which “work mode” it’s trying to help with.

So, it makes me wonder: if that’s true for me, it’s probably true for our customers too.

Maybe they’re not just choosing a service. Maybe they’re choosing the version of themselves that comes with it.

Which leads to a bunch of questions I’m genuinely sitting with right now:

• When someone clicks an ad, what “version of themselves” are they hoping this choice supports?
• What does “the right choice” mean to them socially, not just practically?
• What are they trying to avoid feeling (stupid, trapped, judged, ripped off, overwhelmed)?
• What kind of messaging makes them feel safe enough to proceed?
• And what happens when the ad is technically relevant… but the identity fit is off?

I’m not writing this as a conclusion, by the way. It’s more like a starting point.

This is the kind of thing I want Customer Curiosity Corner to be: taking a real-world business situation, looking at it through a more socio lens, and seeing what we notice when we stop looking at people as purely rational decision engines.

Next up, I’m going to try taking one everyday marketing situation and think it through out loud, no big conclusions, just seeing what we notice when we look at it through a “people don’t decide in a vacuum” lens.

And if any of these sparks a thought for you, or you’ve noticed something similar in your own work, I’d genuinely love to hear it. I’m learning as I go, and the point of putting this out here is to learn in good company.