Alter Agents’ Chief Strategy Officer Devora Rogers recently joined host Andy Jarvis on The Strategy Sessions, a podcast featuring global marketing leaders and original thinkers. In this episode, Devora shared candid stories from her life and career—and delivered some refreshingly practical advice for marketers and researchers alike.

Here are five takeaways from the conversation:

1. People don’t buy in a straight line – so stop pretending they do

One of Devora’s key messages: the traditional “path to purchase” model doesn’t reflect real consumer behavior.

“Below 5%, below 1% of people ever do things in the same order in the same way,” she explained. “There’s just too much information, too many variables.”

Rather than charting a linear journey, Devora recommends mapping out the sources of influence that actually shape decisions. At Alter Agents, this often involves influence matrices that help clients understand what sources are used, how influential they are, and what content is most effective in each context.

2. Talk to people who actually made a decision

Instead of relying on hypothetical or intended behavior, Devora emphasizes the importance of interviewing people who actually completed a purchase. That’s how you get real recall of what influenced them.

“The thing about people who actually made a purchase—we call them purchasers versus intenders—the people that actually did it can actually tell you what they did.”

This makes the data more actionable and the findings more reflective of real-world behavior.

3. Don’t force people into a funnel – meet them where they are

In her conversation with Andy, Devora walked through how influence shifts based on occasion, life stage, and category complexity. For example, buying a car because of a new baby isn’t the same as buying a car on impulse.

“It depends. Is there a new baby? Is there a new job?” she said. “It’s easy to make these pronouncements like, ‘the path to purchase is this’… Our research shows that it can be highly variable depending on what’s at stake.”

That variability makes personalization and context all the more important.

4. The best research reports start with the most important finding

As a former TV and radio producer, Devora applies storytelling principles to how research should be presented.

“Enter late, leave early—that’s the classic idea in filmmaking, right? And it’s the same with research reports or presenting at a conference. What is the most important thing you’re saying in the story? Start there.”

She shared her approach to building presentations: pull out all the slides, look at the full story arc, and often cut the first 10 to 20 pages that don’t add value.

5. If your clients don’t know their objective, you’ll never know what to measure

One of the biggest red flags Devora sees is clients who can’t align internally on what they need. She shared a story about a client that waffled between wanting to have a story to tell retailers to wanting a segmentation to wanting a brand tracker. The moving target made things difficult to say the least. 

But when clients come with a clear objective—whether it’s understanding growth drivers or preparing for an advertiser pitch—that’s when the research can shine. Devora often records early calls and creates the brief from the conversation itself, helping clients sharpen their questions before diving into methodology.

Devora’s message is clear: research is only valuable when it reflects real human behavior, and tells a story people can act on.

You can listen to the full episode of The Strategy Sessions podcast here: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/andi-jarvis/episodes/Zero-Moment-of-Truth-ZMOT-with-Devora-Rogers-e317u9k