Understanding customers through what they actually do
For decades, businesses have relied on three ways to understand customers:
Demographics tell us who they are.
Geographics tell us where they are.
Psychographics tell us what they say they want.
But there's a fourth dimension we've been ignoring:
Actographics: What customers actually do.
Not surveys. Not focus groups. Not stated intentions.
Observable actions. Behavioral patterns. Revealed preferences.
The purchase that accelerated. The category they switched. The sequence that predicted everything.
Welcome to actographics.
Complete customer intelligence requires all four
Age, gender, income, education. Who they are.
Location, region, urban vs rural. Where they are.
Attitudes, values, lifestyle. What they say.
Actions, patterns, sequences. What they actually do.
Five dimensions of observable behavior
The rhythm of behavior. Are they speeding up or slowing down? Purchase velocity, acceleration, and the patterns that emerge over time.
Switching and loyalty revealed through actions. Category migration, channel changes, and brand defection patterns.
The path matters. Purchase sequences, journey patterns, and the A→B→C paths that predict lifetime value.
Predictability as signal. High consistency means forecastable customers. High volatility signals risk or opportunity.
How all dimensions interact and compound. Building complete behavioral fingerprints that predict future actions.