You are the omnichannel marketing director of a retail chain in Santiago. In the budget meeting, the team wants to pour almost everything into awareness —mass campaigns at the top of the funnel— because "you have to fill the top first." But the modern customer's decision journey isn't a linear funnel that fills at the top and drips down: it's a loop. The customer considers an initial set, actively evaluates it (adds and drops brands), buys, lives the experience, and enters a loyalty loop that decides repurchase and recommendation.
The situation
The classic funnel model (awareness → consideration → purchase) assumes a linear path that only widens at the top. The real consumer decision journey is different: the moments when the decision flips tend to sit in the middle —active evaluation, when the customer adds and drops brands— and after the purchase —the experience, the "moment of truth" in store and app, and the loyalty loop that drives repurchase and recommendation. Best Buy stopped showrooming by owning the in-store experience and price-matching; Sephora built an omnichannel journey —in-store trial, app, loyalty program— that wins exactly at those moments.
Here's the trap, in two directions. Pouring the budget into awareness (top of the funnel) fills the entrance but loses the customer during evaluation and never builds the loyalty loop: you pay to get into their mind and abandon them right where the decision gets made. And treating the journey as a linear funnel —optimizing each stage separately and pushing everyone downward— ignores that the customer goes back, compares mid-process, and stays (or leaves) because of the experience afterward. The defensible move is to map the real journey and invest in the decisive moments —active evaluation and the loyalty loop— while keeping just enough awareness to enter the consideration set.