| name | consumer-posture-research |
| description | Deep consumer psychology profiling that reveals how individuals occupy, act within, and think about brand worlds—going far beyond demographics to enable behavioral prediction. Use when launching products/services, creating brand strategy/positioning, developing resonant messaging, understanding competitive differentiation, or predicting consumer response to brand decisions. Produces complete Consumer Posture Profiles for strategic clarity. |
Consumer Posture Research
Overview
This skill produces Consumer Posture Profiles—deep psychological portraits of the ONE individual who makes a brand world tick. Unlike demographic personas, Consumer Posture reveals:
- Occupation: How they occupy space in your brand world
- Activity: Behaviors that reinforce their identity
- Thought Process: Internal logic driving every choice
The goal: a portrait so specific that the consumer would feel genuinely SEEN if they read it.
Workflow
- Gather brand context → Understand brand essence, category, signals
- Research current market → Validate with real-time web search
- Generate Consumer Posture Profile → Follow framework in references/
- Extract strategic implications → Content, voice, product, experience
- Create prediction tests → Validate profile utility
Input Requirements
Before generating a profile, gather:
| Input | Description | Required |
|---|
| Brand Name | The brand being profiled | ✓ |
| Brand Category | Industry/product category | ✓ |
| Brand Essence | 2-3 sentences: what it stands for, vibe, world | ✓ |
| Consumer Signals | Existing insights, successful customers, intuitions | Optional |
Execution Steps
Step 1: Research Phase
Before profiling, conduct current research:
- Search for recent discussions about similar brands/products
- Look for customer reviews, testimonials, community discussions
- Identify behavioral patterns and language used by potential customers
- Note what they're rejecting from alternatives
Tool binding (required). Run validation through the unified research engine — never freehand "web search" or rely on training-data recall:
python3 execution/research.py "<brand/category + consumer signal query>" --depth standard
(Gemini-first → Perplexity → Tavily bedrock floor; honest Research Receipt; $0 on failure.) For exhaustive VOC mining use --depth deep or --depth max, which fans out via .agent/workflows/deep-research-swarm.workflow.js.
Source floor (required). A claim about the consumer (language, behavior, what they reject) may only be called "research-grounded" if it is backed by ≥3 distinct cited sources from the Research Receipt. Claims that fail the floor must be labeled [MODELED] — they are creative inference, not research, and may not be presented as observed consumer reality.
See research-checklist.md for validation criteria.
Step 2: Generate Profile
Follow the complete methodology in consumer-posture-framework.md.
Core principle: Reject demographic framing. Age, income, gender tell you nothing about who this individual IS.
The profile must include:
- The Individual - Vivid description of ONE person
- Occupation in Your World - Their role, energy, what makes the brand world tick
- Activity in Your World - Rituals, routines, identity-reinforcing behaviors
- Thought Process in Your World - Internal logic, alignments, refusals
- The Posture Synthesis - How they "sit up" in your brand
- Strategic Implications - Content, voice, products, experience decisions
- The Prediction Test - 5 hypothetical brand decisions with predicted responses
Step 3: Output Deliverable
Format: Structured prose, 1500-2000 words
Quality Standard: Profile enables confident prediction of consumer behavior in novel situations
See output-templates.md for structure and examples.
Resources
references/
assets/example-profiles/
Reference examples of complete Consumer Posture Profiles:
Creative Latitude
Apply full intuitive judgment. The framework is foundation, but creative intelligence makes the person VIVID and REAL. Go beyond generic descriptors—find:
- Unexpected choices
- Subtle contradictions
- Precise emotional texture of their existence
Where brand essence suggests nuances not stated, explore them. Where signals hint at deeper psychology, pursue it.
Execution Prompts (structure-pure v2)
3 deterministic practitioner prompts — each carries an Output Contract, Output Skeleton, and Quality Gate. When a deliverable matches one, Read it and honor its contract instead of improvising the output shape.
- [BRAND] Consumer Posture Brief —
skills/consumer-posture-research/references/prompts-v2/consumer-posture-brief.md
- [BRAND] Decision Prediction Test —
skills/consumer-posture-research/references/prompts-v2/consumer-posture-decision-prediction.md
- [BRAND NAME] CONSUMER POSTURE PROFILE —
skills/consumer-posture-research/references/prompts-v2/consumer-posture-profile.md