Why Your Customer Is Already Someone Else
Consumorphosis
The Fundamental Shift in Experience Strategy
Experience strategy desperately needs frameworks.
That’s why I like explaining Consumorphosis™, before letting experience designers rush into experience design. Or strategic thinkers into thinking.
Brands build houses on shifting sands if they don’t understand the fluid nature of identity. It’s a departure from traditional experience design focused on static personas, linear journey maps, and isolated "wow moments." Those methodologies assumed stable subjects moving through predictable paths - a luxury we no longer have when we frame experience Startegy and design in Consumorphosis world.
What emerges instead is something more fundamental and powerful.
Consumer disruption that’s more powerful than any organisational disruption, including new tech. And brands as active partners in human development.
When we recognize that identities are constantly in flux, focus shifts from crafting traditional playbooks and perfect moments to turn to creating adaptive systems that help consumers grow, cope, transform, and become.
This isn't just more real-it's more meaningful.
Brands that help customers navigate their complex identity evolution build connections that transcend traditional engagement methods and metrics. Essential life tools rather than interchangeable product providers.
The engagement power of this approach is strong. Consider the difference between a brand that delivers consistent "on-brand" messages to a demographic segment versus one that helps you become the person you're striving to be in this specific moment and context. One easily ignored; The other, maybe indispensable.
The Illusion of Stability
In the conference room of a FTSE100 retailer, executives stare in disbelief at the data on screen. Their most reliable customer segment was behaving in ways that defied every predictive model. The purchasing patterns looked like they belonged to entirely different group of consumers.
"It's like they've become someone else," the CMO said.
What they were witnessing was the new normal.
For over a century, business strategy operated on a quiet and profound assumption: that customers are knowable, classifiable, and stable. This belief was the bedrock of modern marketing, enshrined in business schools and boardrooms.
The tools built on this idea became increasingly sophisticated. Segmentation models divided populations into neat categories. Customer personas gave these segments names, faces, and backstories. Lifetime value calculations projected spending trajectories decades into the future.
That assumption is collapsing fast.
Today's customers shift modes, change identities, and rewrite their own stories faster than any of our brand maps can. Consider the professional who, in a single day, might identify as a corporate executive, a fitness enthusiast, a parent, and a nostalgic gamer- each identity activating different needs, values, and purchasing behaviours.
I call it Consumorphosisâ„¢- the constant, context-driven evolution of consumer identity. Like metamorphosis in nature, Consumorphosis represents a profound transformation, but one that occurs continuously, not once in a lifetime.
The Knowable Customer
At the height of traditional marketing many thought if you knew a few fundamental facts-age, income, education, location you could predict buying behaviour with accuracy. The Mad Men era institutionalised this, creating customer portraits based on demographic data and broad psychological insights.
These frameworks were belief systems. They shaped how entire industries understood the people they served.
As early as the 2010s, studies showed sharp increases in the number of customers behaving unpredictably-rejecting static labels, skipping stages in purchase funnels, defying media planning logic. Research showed 68% of consumers regularly making purchases that contradicted their stated preferences and demographic indicators.
Grant McCracken (the anthropologist) saw this, seeing consumers increasingly treating identity as "a project rather than a given"- something to be constructed, performed, and reconstructed. All based on context and opportunity.
The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically accelerated this fragmentation. It forced many to abandon linear life paths. During lockdowns, millions experienced radical identity shifts: executives became home-school teachers, office workers became amateur bakers, urbanites became digital nomads.
These weren't temporary adaptations - they were profound recalibrations of how consumers understood themselves about products, services, and brands.
Defining Consumorphosisâ„¢
Consumorphosis is the constant, context-sensitive evolution of a customer's active identity-across personal, social, professional, and digital dimensions.
Unlike traditional models of customer evolution, Consumorphosis recognises that today's customers:
• Shift between multiple identities throughout the day, activating different need states and decision making frameworks.
• Navigate what sociologist Zygmunt Bauman called "liquid modernity"- a state where social structures melt faster than new ones can solidify.
• Choose brands, experiences, and even values situationally, not permanently.
This can be how it looks : At 5:30 AM, I’m a disciplined runner seeking performance nutrition and wearable technology. By 10:00 AM, I've shifted to a under-pressure executive needing scheduling tools and status markers. At 3:00 PM, I’m in parent mode, making decisions through the lens of care and safety. By 8:00 PM, I could transform into a nostalgic friend seeking comfort through shared online games.
Each version of myself values different offers, messages, and emotional tones. Each responds to different triggers and measures value through different metrics.
This isn't simply context-dependent behaviour - it's context-dependent identity, where the fundamental "who I am" shifts rather than just "what I want."
This concept extends George Akerlof's pioneering work on information asymmetry. In Akerlof's famous "market for lemons" study, he demonstrated how markets can break down when sellers possess information that buyers lack. With Consumorphosis, we see a new asymmetry: brands operate with outdated information about who their customers are, while customers navigate rapid identity shifts.
Just as buyers in the used car market couldn't trust sellers with hidden information, consumers today can't trust brands that fail to recognize their current identity state. The result is similar: market breakdown and erosion of trust.
The traditional marketing funnel assumed a person remained essentially the same person throughout the purchase journey," explains consumer psychologist Adam Ferrier. "But in reality, they might begin researching as one version of themselves and complete the purchase as someone quite different."
This phenomenon is x-generational but intensifies with younger consumers.
Research shows that 78% of Gen Z respondents agree: "I am different people in different contexts." For them, that’s not an inconsistency but an authentic adaptation.
And digital platforms reflect and accelerate this.
The Forces Driving Consumorphosisâ„¢
Consumorphosis isn't occurring in isolation. It's the result of powerful forces converging to reshape how humans construct and express identity. Understanding these drivers helps us see why this isn't a passing trend but a fundamental shift in human behavior.
1. Hyper-Individualism
Today's customers are not defined by what they inherit but more by what they construct.
Digital platforms have supercharged resources for identity experimentation. Sociologist Sherry Turkle calls it "laboratories for the construction of identity"- spaces where people can try different versions of themselves with minimal social risk.
This manifests in concrete consumer behaviour through the explosion of niche identities that become consumption communities: from "plant parents" to "van lifers," each representing an identity position with its aesthetics, language, values, and purchasing patterns.
2. Context Acceleration via Digital Ecosystems
Before digital immersion, context shifts were relatively slow and physically grounded. The commute from work to home created a transition zone where identity could gradually shift. Digital ecosystems now allow people to shift contexts in seconds - from professional to parent to hobbyist to social self in minutes.
This builds on Jerry Monello's work on situational responses. Monello's research shows how environmental cues trigger specific behavioural patterns. These environmental cues change constantly with digital technologies, forcing rapid identity adaptation. What Monello observed in physical environments now happens at hyperspeed in digital ones.
"The smartphone has collapsed context," explains digital anthropologist Tricia Wang. "It's an identity switching mechanism that allows people to jump between different versions of themselves with unprecedented fluidity."
Linda Stone's concept of "continuous partial attention" adds to this. We maintain partial attention across multiple digital activities, creating a state where identity becomes fractured across various contexts simultaneously.
3. Polycrisis Adaptation
We live in what economist Adam Tooze calls a "polycrisis world"- an era of overlapping challenges including climate change, political polarization, economic instability, and technological disruption. This state forces customers to adopt rapid, flexible adaptation strategies.
When the future becomes increasingly unpredictable, humans respond by developing more adaptive identities. The precarious nature of contemporary work makes linear career identities less viable.
Instead, people develop what management theorist Herminia Ibarra calls "provisional selves" Â tentative identities that can be revised as conditions change.
This connects directly to Zygmunt Bauman's theory of "liquid modernity," where social structures "melt" faster than new ones can form. Consumorphosis is the expression of Bauman's liquid modernity at the individual level.
In this context, identity becomes an active survival tool. People develop "identity diversification"Â maintaining multiple possible selves as a hedge against uncertainty, similar to how financial advisors recommend diversified investment portfolios.
Why Brands Miss Consumorphosisâ„¢
But we continue designing for static customers. Why? I’m guessing, but think this is about structural and cognitive barriers.
1
We use systems, and systems crave predictability. Marketing infrastructure -from customer data platforms to attribution models - requires stable parameters to function. Variable human identities create statistical noise that systems filter out rather than embrace. Customer lifetime value calculations fundamentally assume that past behaviour predicts future choices - an assumption that Consumorphosis directly challenges.
2
Marketing budgets demand linear attribution. When CMOS justifies spending, they need stories about how marketing actions drive customer behaviours. It's easier to say, "Our campaign converted Segment A into customers" than to explain how it resonated with a temporary identity state.
3
CRM software is built for static fields, not dynamic identities. Database architecture treats attributes like "buyer persona" or "segment" as fixed values rather than situational variables, making it challenging to record identity fluidity, much less respond to it.
Richard Thaler's work on mental accounting helps explain this disconnect. Just as consumers employ different mental accounts when making financial decisions across contexts, they activate different identity frameworks across situations. But brands, lacking systems to detect these shifts, continue interacting with outdated identity versions.
4
Organisational structures reinforce segment thinking. Experience and brand teams organise around segments, creating internal motivation around serving particular "types" of customers. Acknowledging the fluidity of these segments threatens not just strategy but organisational self-definition.
5
Perhaps most fundamentally, humans seek cognitive closure. The psychological need to categorise may make Consumorphosis thinking uncomfortable. It's not easy to embrace the messy reality of constant identity renegotiation.
What We Must Do Differently
Responding effectively to Consumorphosisâ„¢ needs a reimagining of how we think. The most successful organisations are making several critical shifts:
From Demographics to Dynamic Identity Sensing
Traditional targeting relies heavily on demographic attributes as proxies for needs and preferences. In a Consumorphosisâ„¢ world, these static attributes become poor predictors of behaviour.
"Demographics tell you who someone was born as," explains consumer futurist Faith Popcorn. "They tell you almost nothing about who someone is becoming."
Forward-thinking brands are shifting to dynamic identity sensing-developing systems that detect which identity mode a customer is currently operating in, regardless of demographic profile.
Spotify exemplifies this approach. Rather than segmenting customers by age or genre preferences, its system tries to detect current mood and context through behavioral signals: time of day, playlist browsing patterns, and device used. They try to match content to identity state rather than to static profile.
This approach builds on Marc Duerden's work on experience design. Duerden emphasises how designed experiences shape behavior by responding to participants' current states rather than fixed attributes. The most effective identity-sensing systems follow Duerden's principles by designing for the present-moment experience rather than demographic categories.
From Linear Journeys to Modular Pathways
Traditional customer journey maps assume people move through awareness, consideration, purchase, and loyalty in predictable sequences. Consumorphosis shatters this linearity.
Instead of designing fixed journeys, adaptive brands are creating modular experience architectures systems of touchpoints that customers can navigate in multiple sequences depending on their current identity state.
REI provides an instructive example. Their ecosystem supports multiple identity modes within the "outdoor enthusiast" space: the gear-obsessed expert, the casual adventurer, the beginner, the environmental advocate. Their experience architecture allows people to activate different modes through multiple entry points-classes, gear rental, forums, advocacy platforms-each touchpoint valuable regardless of sequence.
This approach complements Joseph Pine's work on the Experience Economy. Where Pine showed how experiences create more value than products or services, Consumorphosisâ„¢ explains why the same consumer might seek different experience types at other times.
Think about how Pine's framework of "time well saved" (efficiency), "time well spent" (engagement), and "time well invested" (transformation) maps to different identity modes. The same person might prioritise time-saving in professional mode, engaging experiences in social mode, and transformative experiences in personal growth mode.
From Fixed Experiences to Adaptive Architectures
Brands must shift from designing fixed experiences to creating adaptive architectures-systems that respond to identity shifts rather than assuming identity stability.
Traditional experience design relies on persona-based approaches, creating experiences for specific, imagined customers. When real customers shape-shift across identity modes, these fixed designs become misaligned with actual needs.
Adaptive architecture detects identity signals and reconfigures experiences accordingly. It treats experience not as something to be consumed but as something to co-create based on current identity needs.
In simple terms:
Target demographics —> Sense identity modes dynamically
Assume stable journeys—> Build flexible, modular pathways
Design fixed experiences—> Create responsive experience architectures
Focus on who customers are —> Focus on who customers are becoming
Measure customer value —> Measure identity state value
Build for segments —> Build for shifting selves
Final Reflection: Building for the Fluid Self
The brands that survive the next decade won't be the ones with the best slogans or the stickiest loyalty programs. They will be the brands that understand the fundamental truth of modern consumer behaviour: Identity is motion.
In a 1927 lecture, physicist Werner Heisenberg articulated his famous uncertainty principle, demonstrating that the more precisely you measure a particle's position, the less precisely you can know its momentum-and vice versa. A similar principle now applies to customers: the more precisely you define who someone is, the less accurately you can predict who they're becoming.
This isn't a cause for despair. It’s just reinvention. The opportunity isn't to pin customers down more effectively but to build experiences that thrive on motion rather than stability.
We’ve long known consumers buy to express themelves. Consumorphosis explains why the same consumer will now seek different identity expressions at different times - and so why brands must provide tools for identity fluidity rather than reinforcing fixed identities.
You are not building journeys anymore. You are building ecosystems customers move through as they evolve their own lives - systems that recognise, respond to, and enable personal transformation rather than restricting it.
As psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi observed in his research on optimal experience: "The self is not a rigid entity, but a dynamic system that grows and develops as it responds to challenges." The most successful brands of the coming era will mirror this fluidity, becoming dynamic systems that grow and develop alongside their equally dynamic customers.
You are not designing for a "target audience." You are designing for a living, breathing, shifting narrative-one that the customer authors daily, in collaboration with tools, technologies, communities, and yes - the brands that deserve to be part of the story.
Peter Drucker famously said that the purpose of business is to create and keep a customer. In the age of Consumorphosis, creating a customer means creating space for them to become someone newÂ, again and again and again. And keeping a customer means keeping up with who they're becoming, not clinging to who they were.
The brands that embrace this - your customer is already someone else - you’ll become a partner in the most significant human project of our time: the ongoing, ever-unfolding process of us becoming.
Consumorphosis: A Foundation before Strategic Experience Thinking
Consumorphosis serves as a foundational starting point - a prerequisite for understanding before we can design strategically for the future. Like tectonic plate theory explaining earthquakes, Consumorphosis recognises the underlying shifts in consumer behaviour that make traditional marketing approaches increasingly ineffective.
By understanding the fluid, context-dependent nature of modern identity we begin to design intelligently for situationships, moments, and modes.
This framework doesn't replace important work by thinkers like Monello, Akerlof, Duerden, Pine, Norton. I hope it frames their insights by providing an underlying explanation for accelerating changes in consumer behaviour:
• Monello's situational response mechanisms explain how different contexts trigger identity shifts.
• Akerlof's information asymmetry theory illuminates why brands struggle to understand customers who constantly redefine themselves.
• Duerden's experience design principles provide tools for creating experiences that adapt to identity states.
• Pine's experience economy progression explains why the same consumer might seek different experience types at different moments.
I hope Consumorphosis connects these perspectives by revealing the common denominator: identity is no longer fixed but fluid, context-dependent, and constantly evolving.
The customer is already someone else. So here’s the question: Can your brand become something new?
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Thanks for reading!
Michael