What actually makes brands grow
Marketing science that contradicts most of what marketers believe about loyalty and targeting.
Photograph: Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Sharp directs the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, and his work is unusual in this field for being built on large-scale empirical data across many categories and countries rather than on case studies.
The findings are uncomfortable for a lot of received marketing wisdom. Brands grow mainly by increasing penetration — being bought by more people — rather than by increasing loyalty among existing customers. Most of a brand's sales come from light buyers who buy rarely, not from a devoted core.
It reframes where marketing money should go. If growth comes from reaching more people who buy occasionally, then broad reach and being easy to notice and easy to buy matter more than loyalty schemes and narrow targeting.
Two things decide whether you get bought: whether people think of you at the moment of buying, and whether you are easy to buy when they do. Most marketing effort goes on persuasion, which matters far less than either.
Being recognisably you — colours, logo, a phrase, a voice — used consistently over years does more than a clever positioning claim. It is why brands protect their assets so fiercely and change them so rarely.
Narrowing to your 'ideal customer' can cut you off from the light buyers who make up most of the growth. It is a direct challenge to a lot of small-business marketing advice, including some on this site — worth reading precisely for that.
These links go to their own work. We summarise and point — we do not republish it.
Anyone spending money on marketing who wants evidence rather than opinion, and anyone who has been told loyalty is where growth comes from.
The research is largely from packaged goods and large brands. How far it transfers to small B2B and service businesses is genuinely debated.