Identity Insight: Action - From Utility to Everyday Empowerment
- Hendrikus M. R. Kok
- Dec 20, 2025
- 3 min read
By H. M. R. Kok – Ousia.Consulting
Why we publish this Insight Ledger
At Ousia Consulting, we view brands as more than products or operational systems. They are identity enablers: forces that shape how people live, act, and express themselves. When a brand aligns its offerings, experiences, and customers around a coherent identity, it creates loyalty, engagement, and meaningful impact beyond simple transactions.
This insight is drawn entirely from publicly available information. It is intended to provoke reflection and highlight opportunities for growth. A copy of this edition has been shared, or may be shared, with Action’s management to provide our perspective and invite engagement if desired.
Action: From Utility to Everyday Empowerment
Action is a rapidly growing retail chain in Western Europe, known for offering a wide variety of products at strong prices. From household cleaning supplies to office paper, from tools to small furniture, Action brings convenience and affordability together under one roof. Its operational model and aggressive expansion strategy have clearly fueled its success, making it a favorite for budget-conscious shoppers.
Yet, while Action excels at meeting functional needs (utility), the brand’s identity remains largely implicit (everyday empowerment). Customers experience a store full of items that solve immediate problems, but few leave with a sense that Action is actively empowering their daily life or expressing who they are.
In other words, Action is functionally indispensable but emotionally invisible. This is not a flaw in execution; it is an identity gap.
The Ousia Opportunity: Empowerment Through Identity
At Ousia Consulting, we see a unique opportunity for Action to move beyond transactional value and become a brand that celebrates the capability and resourcefulness of its customers.
Action customers already experience empowerment: they can fix, create, and organize their lives using the products Action provides. But this empowerment is unspoken, and therefore underleveraged. By naming and celebrating this role, Action could transform its stores from mere points of purchase into hubs of capability, confidence, and personal agency.
Imagine a customer leaving with the materials to assemble a home office, repair a bike, or create an organized space for their children. Action could make these moments explicit:
“You made this happen.”
“You can fix and create.”
“You are capable, and we are here to support it.”
Through subtle storytelling in-store, online, and via marketing materials, these messages can shift Action from a cheap-but-practical retailer into a trusted partner in everyday life achievements.
Translating Identity into Experience
The next step is not more products or lower prices. It is coherence between promise and customer experience. Some practical examples:
In-store storytelling: Highlight products not just for sale but for the problems they solve and the capability they enable.
Customer guidance: Mini-guides, tutorials, or suggested “kits” that allow customers to achieve specific goals (e.g., home organization, small DIY projects).
Recognition moments: Reward customers for completing projects with Action products—share photos, tips, or testimonials.
Through these mechanisms, Action could turn everyday shopping into a journey of self-expression and practical mastery, making customers feel competent, capable, and seen.
The Ousia Perspective
Action does not need to reinvent itself. Its strength lies in variety, price, and accessibility. What it lacks is explicit identity articulation and coherence between operational excellence and the psychological benefits it already provides.
By framing the brand around empowerment, capability, and daily life mastery, Action could:
Deepen customer loyalty by building an emotional connection.
Reduce perceived risk and increase repeat visits.
Strengthen its positioning against competitors who offer functional products without meaning.
Identity becomes the organizing principle. Operational execution follows naturally, as it already does at Action.
Closing Thought
Brands that leverage identity shift from providing mere utility to enabling human capability. Action already empowers its customers every day—our insight suggests it can make that empowerment visible, celebrated, and resonant, turning functional utility into meaningful impact.
Ousia Consulting specializes in helping organizations, products, experiences, and customers align around identity. By doing so, Action could not only maintain rapid growth but also become a brand that people feel reflects and amplifies their everyday agency, creating a stronger, more emotionally engaged customer base.
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