Cannabis tracks its products more closely than most consumer categories. State traceability systems follow regulated plants and packages from seed to sale, and many states publish monthly sales totals.
The industry knows far less about the person at the other end of the sale: who that customer is, why they bought, and what they will buy next. Mature categories spent decades building that knowledge. Here is what three of them learned, and what cannabis operators can put to work without waiting for anyone else.
Wine learned there is no typical customer
In the mid-2000s, Constellation Wines U.S. surveyed 3,500 premium wine consumers for a study it called Project Genome. It concluded that “there is no typical wine consumer.” Drinkers fell into six segments defined by motivation rather than demographics: Enthusiast, Image Seeker, Savvy Shopper, Traditionalist, Satisfied Sipper, and Overwhelmed.
The largest group, at 23% of respondents, was the Overwhelmed, people who “find shopping for wine complex and worry about making a mistake.” When Constellation repeated the study a decade later with roughly 7,000 consumers, the segments had changed, but the Overwhelmed still made up 19%.
The cannabis lesson is direct. A menu built for the most engaged shopper can quietly lose the one who is afraid of choosing wrong, and that shopper may be a large share of the room. Operators can start segmenting by motivation with one optional question at loyalty sign-up or checkout, such as what the customer is shopping for today. Sales data alone cannot produce that segmentation.
Packaged goods learned to follow the same household
Packaged goods companies do not rely on store totals alone. NielsenIQ’s consumer panel, as described by the Kilts Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, has 40,000 to 60,000 U.S. households that use in-home scanners to record their purchases from any outlet. Because the same households report over time, analysts can see trial, repeat purchase, and switching directly instead of inferring them.
A cannabis loyalty program sees one customer at one retailer, but it can still answer the most important question. Measure repeat at the product level, not just the visit level. Of the customers who bought a product for the first time last quarter, how many bought it again? A product that sells well but rarely repeats is a merchandising problem hiding inside a good sales number.
Tobacco learned to watch change over time
The Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study, a collaboration between the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration that started in 2013, is a national longitudinal study. About 49,000 people ages 12 and older participate, and the study contacts each of them once a year or every other year. Following the same people is what lets researchers see how individual habits change.
Cannabis has serious consumer research too. The International Cannabis Policy Study, led by professor David Hammond at the University of Waterloo, has surveyed consumers in Canada and the United States every year since 2018. It uses a repeat cross-sectional design, recruiting new respondents for each wave. That design shows how the market changes from year to year, but not how any one consumer’s habits change.
Format shifts are where this matters for operators. Customers move between flower, vapes, edibles, and beverages, and most stores see that shift only in the category mix after it happens. In your own data, group customers by the format they first bought and see what the same group buys six months later.
Share what can be shared
Wine also learned that some knowledge is cheaper to build together. Wine Market Council, a nonprofit funded by member companies across the wine industry, started in 1996 because industry leaders realized they needed more data to understand U.S. wine consumers. Its history notes that this mattered most to small family wine businesses without the resources for an in-house research department. Its benchmark segmentation study has run since 1997.
Independent cannabis operators face the same problem at a smaller scale. State trade associations could commission anonymized, pre-competitive consumer research the way wine’s member companies do, so that a single-store operator gets the kind of segmentation only large brands can afford on their own.
What to do this quarter
Cannabis operators don’t need to wait for a federal study or national consumer panel to start learning more about their customers.
- Ask why. Add one question about purchasing motivations where customers already share information.
- Measure repeat purchases. Track whether customers return to the same product, not just the store.
- Follow changing preferences. Group customers by their first purchase format and see what they’re buying six months later.
- Pool research resources. Work with state trade associations to develop consumer research that smaller operators cannot afford on their own.
Cannabis already collects enormous amounts of sales and product data, but most of it tells operators what sold, not why someone bought it or whether they’ll buy it again.
Wine learned to understand customers by their purchasing motivations rather than demographics alone. Packaged goods companies learned to follow the same households to measure repeat purchases and changing preferences. Tobacco researchers learned the value of tracking consumer behavior over time.
Cannabis can learn from all three. The industry doesn’t necessarily need more market research. It needs research that explains why customers buy, what brings them back, and how their preferences change over time.
