Features of planning recent purchases across population segments.

Shopping is becoming less of a rational process and more of a behavioral habit.

Only 66% of Ukrainians plan both the purchase itself and the place where they will buy it. The rest make decisions either partially or completely spontaneously. And this is a very revealing shift for the market.

The younger audience aged 18–29 is especially interesting: only 48% fully plan their purchases, while 52% leave room for impulse, random exposure, or environmental influence. Older audiences show a very different pattern — among people aged 50–65, the level of full purchase planning reaches 77%.

This means that competition between brands increasingly happens not at the moment of product search, but much earlier — at the stage of building attention, habit, and emotional connection.

In practice, marketing is starting to influence not only brand choice, but the very emergence of demand itself. Especially in digital environments, where content, recommendations, and algorithms constantly create new consumption scenarios.

Is the real competitive advantage today no longer product quality or price, but the ability to create purchase intent before an actual need even appears?

Data processed by Media Systems