Businesses have more data than ever. But enormous data doesn’t always mean better decisions. What matters is understanding what consumers are signaling and using that insight to improve how products are designed, marketed, and sold.
However, many companies don’t realize just how tough launching a product can be. More than 50% of new products fail to meet their goals, despite heavy spending on development and marketing.
Even worse, up to 95% fail to achieve the desired results. Most of the time, the product isn’t the issue—it’s the companies that don’t have a solid plan for introducing it to customers.
Closing the gap between data and real-world consumer behavior requires a different kind of expertise, one that blends analytics, strategy, and a deep understanding of how people make decisions. This is where business development specialist Soukayna Lakhsassi has built her reputation: “Data is only useful if it changes a decision. The real work is connecting consumer signals—what people say, what they do, and what they hesitate to do—and turning that into something a business team can act on,” Lakhsassi explains.
That sensitivity to consumer behavior did not begin in a consulting boardroom. Growing up around her mother’s catering business gave her early exposure to how food businesses operate, from managing costs to maintaining product quality and customer loyalty: “My mother ran a small catering business for years. Watching how she managed quality, customers, and costs gave me an intuitive understanding of consumer goods,” she shares.
Those early observations shaped how she later approached strategy and analytics: not as abstract data exercises, but as tools for understanding real people and real purchasing decisions.
Before consulting, Lakhsassi gained hands-on analytical experience in Morocco’s energy sector. She carried out energy audits, finding ways to improve efficiency across processes, from operations to infrastructure.
Her work supported major energy and industrial clients, helping analyze operational energy use and identify opportunities to reduce energy use and replace it by renewables by as much as 50%, through detailed energy management strategies. The experience of translating complex operational data into practical recommendations continues to shape how she approaches business strategy today, treating customer journeys, pricing models, and product ecosystems as interconnected systems: “Energy audits teach you to think systematically. You learn to find inefficiencies hidden inside large systems,” Lakhsassi explains.
Lakhsassi later expanded this experience at the policy level when she joined the German Development Agency (GIZ) as a technical advisor supporting Morocco’s Ministry of Energy. In that role, she contributed to national energy efficiency initiatives and helped secure €20 million in international funding while coordinating training programs for thousands of architects on energy-efficient building practices: “Working at the policy level teaches you how complex systems operate. That perspective carries over into business strategy,” Lakhsassi says.
Today, Lakhsassi uses those same lessons when creating products and go-to-market strategies for consumer goods and startups. Using a unique system she has devised, Lakhassi pays close attention to convenience, health, and cultural identity.
She also deliberately goes beyond conventional benchmarks to uncover insights that traditional analysis might overlook. Rather than limiting research to well-established markets, she often looks for ideas in less obvious places: “When people do benchmarking, they usually look only at mature markets. But the most interesting solutions sometimes come from less developed places, where someone has already solved a problem in a smart way,” she explains.
This openness to unconventional sources of insight shaped many of her projects across industries. One of the sectors where Lakhsassi applied this mindset most extensively was automotive mobility. While at McKinsey & Company in Boston, she collaborated with premium automakers to study how drivers used emerging technologies in their cars.
Her work wasn’t limited to theory. She designed large-scale consumer surveys and led focus groups. The goal was to see how drivers interacted with their cars, digital interfaces, and charging systems in everyday life—not just how they were supposed to use them.
According to Lakhsassi, the real value of consumer research often lies in uncovering subtle behaviors that traditional analytics might miss: “Focus groups aren’t for confirming what you already believe. The goal is to hear about the friction points consumers struggle to articulate. Sometimes the most valuable insight is a small behavioral detail,” she shares.
Lakhsassi’s team uncovered small but crucial usability problems in cars. By fixing them early—like dashboard displays or infotainment controls—automakers improved the user experience before new features hit the market.
Insights like these are becoming more important as the global mobility landscape evolves rapidly. According to the International Energy Agency, electric vehicle sales surpassed 14 million units in 2023, yet issues remain unsolved when it comes to charging infrastructure, pricing, and usability: “Consumers think about convenience. If charging feels confusing or slow, that becomes the barrier,” Lakhsassi adds.
Understanding these behavioral barriers also opened the door to exploring entirely new mobility models.
Beyond vehicle design, this business development expert also worked on new mobility business models. Her work contributed to the development of mobility offerings, with the goal of designing vehicle access models aligned with evolving consumer lifestyles rather than traditional ownership patterns. Instead of buying a single vehicle, drivers can access a range of cars through a monthly membership.
Lakhsassi explains that designing these models begins not with vehicles, but with lifestyle patterns: “We started by asking how people actually use their transportation. When you map those patterns, you can design a product that feels intuitive instead of forced,” she explains.
Using segmentation models, Lakhsassi’s team pinpointed the most valuable customer groups and refined marketing strategies to lower acquisition costs while boosting retention.
When an emerging startup came next, which needed go-to-market strategies, they applied the same lens, tracing the customer journey from initial discovery and digital engagement through purchase and onboarding.
By identifying friction points, they optimized digital channels and accelerated early adoption.
As Lakhsassi puts it: “Certain models only work if the value proposition is extremely clear. For some customers, it’s flexibility. For others, it’s status or convenience. Segmentation helps companies position the offer correctly.”
While automotive projects focused on consumer adoption and product design, Lakhsassi later applied similar analytical methods to a very different industry: food and beverage.
She had the opportunity to work on a multi-country profit optimization initiative for a major food retail company operating across five markets. The project focused on identifying hidden profit levers within menu design, pricing strategy: “Menu strategy is one of the most powerful profit levers in food service. Sometimes a small change in how products are bundled or displayed can dramatically shift margins,” Lakhsassi explains.
The team looked into transaction data, customer preferences, and even competitor offerings to identify pricing gaps and promote higher-profit menu items. Similar analytical methods were also applied in a margin diagnostic for a global beverage company, where Lakhsassi helped create data-driven recommendations on pricing strategy and product mix to improve performance.
The global restaurant industry is projected to exceed $1 trillion in annual revenue by the end of the decade, yet profitability remains highly sensitive to supply chain costs and pricing strategies: “We analyze the entire ecosystem—competitors, price points, marketing tactics, product mix. Then we compare that with how consumers actually behave in those markets. That combination helps reveal where the real profit levers are,” she shares.
Lakhsassi’s work has also extended into the hospitality and tourism sector, where consumer perception plays a central role in shaping economic development. This includes designing pricing structure, partnership ecosystems, and phased market rollout strategy.
She has also helped design a marketing and investment positioning strategy within the tourism industry: “Modern tourism strategy goes beyond attracting visitors. It also focuses on positioning destinations to draw investment in hotels, infrastructure, and new travel experiences,” Lakhsassi explains.
She adds: “On these kinds of projects, you are often balancing different priorities. The goal is to create a narrative that makes a destination attractive from both a traveler’s perspective and an investor’s perspective,” she adds.
However Lakhassi also emphasizes that building trust is just as important as technology: “Restaurant owners operate under tight margins and time pressure. They won’t change suppliers unless the new system clearly saves time, reduces costs, or improves reliability,” she shares.
Others who have worked with Lakhassi have been quick to praise her skills. Lina Madi is a Strategy manager at the largest franchise retailers and mall operators in the Middle East and North Africa.
She worked with Lakhassi on a number of large-scale projects: “In my professional judgment, Soukayna’s contributions were unequivocally leading and critical. She exercises real ownership over key parts of every project, directs team members, and directly influences strategic decisions across multiple sectors and geographies—the exact level of impact and leadership you see in a top consultant.”
Madi adds: “Across all of her engagements, Soukayna has demonstrated an impressive mix of analytical rigor, leadership, and strategic thinking. She consistently upholds the quality and timeliness of deliverables.”
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Speaking of the work they have done together in the public sector, she recalls: “Soukayna contributed to a project where she analyzed the KSA consumer market and informed on $500M in potential investment.
“She led the core analytical work, identifying high-growth opportunities and investment priorities that directly informed strategic recommendations for stakeholders.
“As well as this, she has been involved in a number of other different areas. Soukayna has structured the overarching strategic narrative, defined priority investor segments, and led the creation of a complete suite of investment materials and pitch decks used in international outreach.”
Her praise is just as high in relation to the work they have done together in the private sector, where Madi says Lakhassi led critical analytical workstreams in the design of a profit optimization strategy: “We worked together on a restaurant brand which operated across several key markets.
“Soukayna directed the identification of cost optimization levers and pricing strategies, contributing to double-digit margin expansion and significant revenue uplift in a large-scale, multi-market business.”
Ali Haddour is another individual who has seen the impact of Lakhassi’s expertise firsthand. He has known her for four years and has worked with Lakhassi in a number of different settings.
He recalls she took full ownership of entire workstreams end-to-end, managed key analytical modules, and delivered client-ready outputs that senior executives relied on: “ On the consulting side, I saw her win over stakeholders the rest of us had written off. On the startup side, I have watched her build a global supply chain essentially from cold outreach. The label “business development” undersells it; she runs the full commercial stack — BD, partnerships, brand, and marketing — and does all of it well, which is rare.”
He adds: “Across the engagements we have worked on together, Soukayna demonstrated an impressive mix of analytical rigor, leadership, and strategic thinking. She executed complex analyses, guided team outputs, and helped shape the final recommendations that clients acted on.”
Lakhsassi’s work is supported by a robust quantitative toolkit that includes statistical modeling, geospatial analysis, and advanced data visualization, enabling her to analyze large datasets and identify emerging market patterns across industries.
She also has experience with programming and engineering tools, including R and Tableau. These skills allow her to rapidly prototype models, analyze consumer datasets, and test strategic hypotheses across large and complex markets: “The tools matter less than the questions you ask, but having the technical capability allows you to test hypotheses quickly,” Lakhsassi shares.
This analytical mindset did not emerge from a traditional business trajectory. Lakhsassi credits her nontraditional path—engineering, development policy, and consulting—for shaping her approach to business: I didn’t follow the traditional MBA route. My background is in engineering and international development, so I learned business strategy mostly on the job. That mix helps me connect technical analysis with real consumer behavior,” she explains.
Her interdisciplinary approach was further strengthened during her graduate studies. As a Fulbright Scholar at American University in Washington, DC, Lakhsassi earned a Master’s in International Affairs with a focus on Data Analysis and International Economics.
Her graduate training equipped her with knowledge in data modeling techniques that she later applied to consumer segmentation, pricing strategy, and market-entry decisions across multiple industries. This analytical foundation continued to shape her approach in consulting environments: “At McKinsey, we’re trained to build rigorous analytical frameworks. But the creative part comes from being curious enough to look beyond the obvious benchmarks,” she shares.
Despite the rise of artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, and automated decision tools, Lakhsassi believes the strongest strategies still start with human insight: “Whether you’re building a mobility platform or a food brand, the starting point is always understanding how people actually live their lives,” she says.
While advanced analytics, AI, and automation continue transforming how organizations operate, Lakhsassi sees consumer understanding as the real foundation of lasting growth: “Technology can scale solutions, but insight is what tells you which problems are worth solving,” she says. She believes that the real advantage is in translating consumer understanding into decisive action: “Clients usually come to advisors when decisions feel foggy. Our role is to analyze the ecosystem, understand consumers deeply, and give teams the confidence to move forward.”
She adds: “Algorithms can process information, but they rarely explain why people behave the way they do.” For Lakhsassi, companies that thrive will be those that remember a simple principle: strategy begins—and ends—with the customer.
