Post Post-Purchase

Note: We’re joining what should be a great conversation next week with Katherine Goodman of Cornbread Hemp to get behind the hype of AI and talk about how she and other brands are using it today. Join here.

We’ve spent some time here over the last few weeks talking about value-led discovery and how UGC, social proof, and word of mouth can justify that value.

One of the pieces we haven’t spent as much time talking about: What happens after the initial purchase?

We’re going to be pulling data around this question, so this is more of an “experience of one” musing, but I’m curious of your experience, too. (So, request: put on your consumer hat and tell me whether this is relatable.) And the best place to start with this, I think, is that the price I pay for something for the first time I buy it is the price I expect to pay going forward.

So, for example, if I get 20% off a $50 product for providing my email address, my true cost on the product is $40. And I really won’t pay more than that again; you’ve told me that you’re willing to sell the product at that price and think that’s a fair value. If I think that’s a fair value, too, why pay more?

This, at least, is my personal (and even somewhat emotional) rationale, but I suspect others are like this, too.

And it’s what happens after this that I think is most interesting. Because what I’ve observed in my own behavior is that one of two things happen:

1. I find the product (either DTC or in retail) on sale at the price I’m willing to pay and stock up. But I only do this when I need the product.

2. I can’t find the product on sale at the price I’m willing to pay and buy a new, competing product in the price range I paid originally. Sometimes, I end up liking this product more (sometimes, too, this product is on sale).

What this ultimately means, then, is that I end up in a cycle where brands are competing to win my share of wallet and, when they do, they pull forward a number of sales (essentially, taking me out of the market for a while).

This is fairly category specific, and, in some cases, I don’t necessarily end up at option 2 above.

An example: There’s a granola my family likes that I buy at Costco, but it goes on sale occasionally and I know that price is meaningfully better. I also happen to have a sense of the sale cadence. So, when it is on sale, I’ve done the math in my head of how many bags I need to buy until the next sale.

My purchase frequency isn’t really that good, but the brand has a near complete share of wallet for the category and it constantly pulls forward my demand. That, though, comes at a tradeoff. They’re taking more raw profit dollars today (because of the bulk-buying from the sale) instead of less total profit dollars over time.

That seems to work for them, and it definitely works for me.

But other categories? If a product isn’t as important to my family for a particular reason, I end up at option 2, and whoever has the sale at the right time (or delivers the most value at the right time) ends up capturing my demand. You can see how that could be considered a lack of loyalty from a brand side, but, in reality, I’m fairly loyal to all of them. Just at a specific price.

These types of consumer tradeoffs, I think, are going to remain fairly important for us to consider as consumer sentiment remains low and value-led buying becomes a learned and, possibly, accelerated behavior with LLMs making deal-hunting much easier.

I’m curious what you think. Does this land?