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Consumer spending is one of the most important metrics for any industry — yet all too often, businesses fail to track it effectively. But understanding how your target audience is spending their money and why can be critical for your business planning and activities.
Tracking consumer spending habits can provide a wide range of critical insights that will enable you to increase your own profit margins and ensure that your brand is positioned to best appeal to its audience.
Related: How to Grow Your Business When Customer Behaviors Change
1. Understand customer preferences
At the foundational level, tracking consumer spending is essential if you wish to have a better understanding of your customers’ shopping preferences and behaviors. What is the average number of items customers purchase in a single transaction? What is the average value of each order? What products are bought together?
Consistently analyzing these and other spending trends among your customer base can help you identify more effective strategies for marketing, such as offering complementary products.
Amazon is perhaps the ultimate case study of leveraging consumer spending habits to fully understand — and capitalize on — customer preferences. The company’s algorithms notably draw on data points like the products a customer has purchased and rated, and then use that information to recommend similar or complementary products. By leveraging data to gain an in-depth understanding of customer preferences, Amazon has become the retail giant it is today.
2. Personalize your marketing
Tracking customer spending habits can be a valuable resource for personalizing your marketing efforts. The rise of generative AI, in particular, is believed to have significant potential in streamlining marketing personalization for brands big and small — but for this personalization to be effective, you need to supply it with good data.
Tracking individual customer spending helps you identify what types of products a particular customer likes and which related products or services would be the most appealing to them. According to McKinsey, 71% of customers now expect personalized interactions based on this type of information — and even more telling, 76% are disappointed when they don’t get it.
Tracking spending provides the information you need to ensure personalized messaging hits the mark. In fact, 70% of companies with an advanced personalization strategy report a return on investment of 200% or more.
Related: 3 Ways to Personalize Your Marketing for Higher Engagement
3. Predict and prepare for market trends
In addition to improving marketing outcomes on an individual level, looking at the big picture of customer spending can also help your business prepare for and adapt to wider market trends.
For example, according to research conducted by Faye, the top travel trends that Americans plan to spend money on in 2025 include solo traveling (26%), “low season” or off-peak travel (24%), destination “dupes” that are similar to but cheaper than larger tourist destinations (20%) and sports tourism (15%).
For Faye, as a travel-related business, understanding how customers plan to spend money regarding their travel plans can provide critical information that can then influence marketing plans and timed service offerings. In any industry, becoming more aware of wider market trends is critical for staying ahead of competitors and avoiding major downturns.
4. Improve your products or services
Customer feedback is one of the best ways that businesses can get insights into how their target audience views their products or services. While customers may sometimes be willing to write a review or contact customer support, their spending data can also give your team crucial insights into the appeal and viability of a particular product or service.
For example, you might discover that a product that was once a major sales driver for your brand has seen significant declines over time. This data doesn’t exist in a vacuum — it could stem from seasonal or macroeconomic trends. But it could also serve as an indicator that your competitors have begun to offer something more appealing.
Tracking customer spending can become an important first step in identifying when there is a need (or opportunity) to make adjustments and improvements to your existing products and services.
5. Improve retention rates
It’s one of the most commonly repeated data points in all of business — increasing customer retention by just 5% can increase your company’s profits by 25% to 95%. This is largely because it can cost five to 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing customer.
Each of the previously mentioned reasons to track customer spending will have a significant impact on your customer retention rates. By better understanding overarching preferences, personalizing marketing to individual customers, gaining insights into market trends and optimizing your products, you create an environment where customers are more likely to stick with you in the long run.
As you make the most of spending insights to optimize your operations and increase your efficiency, you’ll improve customer satisfaction and retention, which will also give your profit margin a much-needed boost.
Related: 3 Pillars of Client Retention Every Brand Needs to Implement
There are many ways you can gain greater insights into customer spending habits. Whether leveraging readily available data from your own website and sales platforms, conducting surveys of your target audience or utilizing third-party data, you can gain the necessary insights to adjust your operations and become more profitable. Making the necessary investments to better track and analyze customer spending will more than pay for itself in the long run.