💁🏻‍♀️ I made my wife shop for cannabis to see how she did it

I spend a lot of time thinking about how people shop for cannabis. I think about where they start their shopping journey - online, chatting with a friend, in a brick and mortar store - and what the milestones along their journey look like.

I think about new entrants into the industry, and how they understand their choices, and why they’re exploring cannabis options in the first place. I think about analytics, and what people search or filter for, and why.

Now that I’m writing it in a long string like that, maybe I think about it a little too much. 🤔

Nah, just playin’, let’s talk even more about it.

👨‍🔬 The Experiment Commences

My wife is not a cannabis consumer (anymore). She is an advocate, of course, and she had her heyday, but nowadays she prefers a glass of wine.

I was struck by the notion that I spend nearly all day imagining what’s in the brains of new cannabis shoppers, when I have one of those brains under my own roof!

So I handed her my phone and told her to pretend she wants to buy cannabis products and to forget that I work at Jane.

Without further ado, here is how my wife shops for cannabis:

🔦 She begins with Google

As you can see, she started where 92% of all searches start: Google. She searched for:

“low dose cannabis”

Right on. I’m sitting next to her, managing the screenshots, and I ask her why she started there.

I suppose that’s fair, I told her.

🌱 She ends up on Leafly to learn more

She ends up reading - not browsing, but actually reading - an article about ultra-low cannabis dosing. I ask her to narrate.

10mg, I tell her.

Education was pretty important to her - she wanted to feel confident about her search and future choices. She went back to Google and read a Forbes article about the same subject.

When she was done reading, I asked her to actually try to buy some products. Where would she go?

🛍 She kept it local

She searched for "low dose cannabis products near me" and here's what the search yielded:

She went to the very first one - Atrium - and navigated to their site. She found a Jane menu, which was lucky for this experiment. (And to be fair and transparent, lots of dispensaries around us use homegrown or competitive eComm platforms).

She searched for "low dose" on the menu, and fell in love with the BIPOC-owned brands row. Then she saw the Women-owned brands row, and fell in love there, too. Petra mints caught her eye, so she clicked on the Tart Cherry.

She read the description, she noticed product reviews, and she saw the strong star rating. She kept scrolling and...

🏆 She finds the Holy Grail

…bingo bango bongo - she found exactly what she was looking for. A real person with real feedback on a real, available product. And it was right in line with her goals.

This is a datapoint of one, I understand - it may not be representative of all shoppers in the space. But the mix of educational searches, local search ("near me"), and decisions based on community product feedback are more or less universal at this point.

📚 tl;dr

• I spend too much time thinking about how cannabis shoppers shop

• My wife is not a cannabis consumer, so I asked her to research and find products so I could observe and tell you guys about it

• She did research, googled local product terms, found a product that matched her usage occasion goals, then confirmed her purchase via verified product reviews

• It is Thursday